The Torturer's Penance
by Ihsan997
Summary: During the campaign against the Iron Horde, a man running from his past ponders his sins. His history first as a jailer with the Warsong Outriders and later a prisoner for war crimes haunts Khujand as he reminisces over his own terrifying rise and the very necessary fall that broke him. Contains violence, torture, drug use, self-harm and intense scenes in prison.
1. Do You Remember?

An orcish woman flipped through some notes she had spread out on the table, checking over some sort of list with a nailed finger. She was wearing some rather thick furs, both feral yet exquisite at the same time. Her head, neck and forearms were uncovered, yet she seemed relatively unaffected by the cold Frostfire air swirling around her. The fire burning under the mantle seemed enough for her.

The large jungle troll bundled up from head to toe across the table from her wasn't faring so well. Tucking his hands between his knees, he hunched over as much as he could in an attempt to stay warm. Even after two months on Draenor, his system had not adjusted to the extreme cold in Frostfire Ridge. Perhaps it never would. Some of the grunts around the new garrison city remarked that one could always bundle up a little bit more in cold weather, while there was nothing you could do to escape hot weather. It took everything he had in him not to hex those fools into something delicious like salmon or quail.

His hands could never be idle for too long without drifting up to the various animal teeth and claws on the necklace Cecilia had given him. It had been a few days since he had seen her - it's incredible how convenient travel was with warping and flight paths and all - and the prospects of waiting days or even a week or two before seeing her again was a little bit easier this time. The constant flow of letters they had been writing to each other made the distance bearable. Although they avoided using the M-word, they used the L-word freely after just shy of a month. Things were moving fast, which she acknowledged first and had no fear of, and it was she who used the L-word first. She was much braver than he was, he had to admit.

Snapping back into the present, Khujand looked back at his interviewer for fear of having missed a question. The orc had only just now looked up at him; he was in the clear. He had heard about the Hand of the Titans guild during his second visit to Gorgrond - one of several things he lied about during his interview, claiming to only have visited Gorgrond once and only spent time with some strangers around a campfire. He was still a bit self-conscious about being in such an unconventional relationship and was ready to hide it until their respective services on Draenor were finished and they could elope back to Azeroth. The guild was all business, and there was no need to mix it with the personal.

Truthfully, he did need allies while he was there. A group of people who had dedicated themselves to opposing worldwide threats such as the Twilight's Hammer, Burning Legion and now the Iron Horde was a noble cause. These seemed like people he could get along with, if they could deal with the biting sarcasm and mocking behavior he had developed since his social skills had slowly started to reemerge. He didn't want to screw this up.

The orc folded up her notes and tucked them away into a bag, which she then buttoned closed and laid to the side. She was taking her time during the interview, which made her come off as a calm, collected leader. He hoped she would be easy to take orders from. She was quite young to be leading a guild - nineteen years old, if he had heard correctly. She certainly seemed mature enough, and if there was one thing he had learned since his release back into society it was to judge himself first and not worry so much about what other people were being or doing.

Looking back at him, she seemed prepared to ask him one more question. "Alright Khujand, before we conclude the interview I need to ask you one more question." How did he guess that?

"Do you have anything in your past which could follow you here and negatively affect the guild?" Her question was sincere and she didn't seem to be implying anything, yet he still froze. On top of literally freezing as well.

"Uh...what do you mean by past, Miss...eh, Anroka?" he asked.

She still didn't seem suspicious, though he didn't know if she was simply skilled at hiding what she was thinking. "You know, old enemies or vendettas that could come back to haunt you and, by extension, us. We had one member in particular who didn't mention that he had crossed paths with an undead warlock bent on cursing the shadows of every building in the guild to burn people who strayed into them."

She paused now, waiting to see how he would answer. No, she didn't know anything. There was no way. The record he had was fake and relatively minor, his actual identity and past being long buried and wiped out of his life entirely. There was no means via which she could have found out.

The fire danced in the hearth of the barracks, the room empty of life except for the two of them and another jungle troll, though his drowsiness meant that he likely wasn't paying attention to anything they were saying. His role wasn't entirely clear anyway; he mostly seemed to just stand around in the barracks.

Khujand considered his options. He could lie and would never, ever be caught. He and Celia had decided to simply escape their checkered pasts. There was no point in fighting losing battles and exercising in futility. This would be a good test to see if he truly was up to starting over, blank slate, with the new identity and life story. To see if he really had cut off from that former life which was no longer his and never would be again.


	2. Opportunity

_Nine years ago. Another story._

Shadows danced around the room as the single lit candle burned brightly on the nightstand. It was wedged between the bed and the same wall as the door, though it still provided just enough space for him to sit on his wooden stool and sulk between the bed and the wall without blocking the door. He sat hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees, pretending to inspect his fingernails.

Zulwatha sat on wicker chair in front of the dresser in the opposite corner of their bedroom. The thick linen curtain was heavy enough that stood still in all but the heaviest of breezes, and any light from the stars above was blocked out. Just that annoying little candle, the flame dancing on its wick irreverently. The air was still enough that he could hear every movement of her fingers as Zulwatha unbraided her hair. He was too shy to take a peek at the mirror on top of the dresser and check if she was looking at him or not. Most likely not.

There was no reason for it to be like this, he thought.

"Ya know, dis gig I be havin' up in da north of da Barrens, maybe sometimes in da south of da Ashenvale...this could turn out ta be a real good thing," he finally spoke up. "It be stable work, an' just like when I was in da Third War. Dey said I can come home an' visit everybody four times a year, too."

He stopped, not wanting to sound desparate or manic. Did he say too much? Did he speak too fast?

_You said what you need to_, he didn't think. That wasn't him thinking. The voice had started in Ashenvale during the Third War. He tried to ignore its presence.

Zulwatha ignored him entirely as she finished unbraiding her hair. She didn't even speed up, nor did a single muscle in her body move to indicate that anyone else was even in the room with her. He had looked up now and saw that her expression was blank with the exception of her downcast eyes.

He decided to try again. He felt obligated to do so. They had made each other feel good before, many years before adulthood. He was eighteen now, and she just two years older than him. They were grown up, but this wasn't grown up behavior. They were dealt a hand of cards, and they needed to play it. There was no giving up in the game of life, he told himself.

"Dis could be a big opportunity," he continued vainly. "Dis be a salaried position, and dey said a Horde officer can send everything I earn back here to da village. We can live well, da whole family can. Dey gonna give me a stipend for food and necessities up at da base, so everything else is gonna be sent to ya here." It was good news; she was being taken care of. Things weren't so bad. Maybe the day has just been shocking to her. If their wedding day was overwhelming for him, he could only imagine how it must feel for her.

As Zulwatha brushed her hair, she finally cocked her chin up a bit to get a better look in the mirror. She was still ignoring him with the most disinterested look she could muster, but speaking out had helped him to gain enough confidence to look in her direction now. He did his best to scan the back of her shoulders, her lovely orange hair as it spilled over her back, the white night gown that was far more conservative than normal attire for Darkspear women in the home, the surface of the top of the dresser. Anything to look in her direction without the intimacy of eye contact.

This wasn't right. They could still be cordial to each other. It didn't feel as though he was rushing her; they normally spoke so openly. It was as though her personality just flipped, and in those few short weeks she had become a completely different person. He was determined to be her counselor, like he had always been, to help her through this as they had helped each other through other problems. Even if now, their problem was each other.

"Ya looked great in ya tribal garb tonight, Thawa," he said with a smile. Truthfully, she had looked quite good, though their long friendship had prevented him from looking at her in that way before. She was a sister to him in all but blood. Perhaps calling her by her nickname - a nickname she only allowed five people on all of Azeroth to use, including him - would remind her just who they had been to each other. He wanted so bad for her to be happy. Couldn't she see that?

She opened the glass jar full of yellowish-clear lotion and rubbed some between her palms. Her chin was cocked down again, focusing on her task. She was always so hard-headed, but she had never been closed off. She was an open book, even to people outside their circle of friends. This was not Zulwatha sitting before him now. It was almost as if another person had possessed Zulwatha's body. She didn't act this way with anybody, not even people she didn't like.

"I ain't never seen ya momma so happy, like she was tonight," he said as he searched for the right spot, the right piece to the puzzle to bring the old Thawa back. "Ya sister too, ya know, an' they were talkin' about it back at her weddin' a few months ago. Da whole family be happy for ya now. Dey gonna support ya when I be out west. I...I think everything is gonna be alright." It was idle talk, but he was out of his element. She was the one person he could always talk to, and all of a sudden she was holding out on him. He didn't know what to do.

_Stop delaying. Get down to business._

He shoved the voice down, pretending it was his own intuition urging him to get to the point. There was no reason to wait. As she began massaging the lotion into her legs, he took a deep breath and decided that her silence was an invitation to have the talk.

"Look, Thawa...I didn' want this either. Ya know that. I don' even need ta tell ya, ya could always read me." The sadness in his eyes was real, though he did make an effort to bring it out more. She had to know he was sincere.

"I'm sorry dey made dis happen. I really am. It wasn' meant ta be, an' I know it ain't fair to ya...but we can still be happy. We can make dis work in our own way. Ya my best friend in da whole world, Thawa. Ya told me dat I be da same ta ya. We can still be best friends in private, ya know. Nothin has ta change between us in reality. In public, I guess we gotta fake it a bit, pretend dat we a normal couple, just distant from each other. I'm sorry things can' be da way dey was before, but it is what it is. No reason for us ta be mad at each other. We can still be friends and we both know da truth, right?"

Zulwatha's hands continued working the lotion into her skin without interruption despite the speed of her answer. She really had been waiting for this.

"You a man, you coulda fought dis. It be different for ya. Ya know dat. A woman ain't got no choice in an arranged marriage, and ya know dat too and ya let it happen," she said with more than a hint of resentment in her voice. Her eyes were still focused on her legs, not a hint of strain to be found. He was beginning to feel like it wasn't just an act and she really didn't want to be around him.

This was the discussion she had wanted, and now his confidence was back. His friend was still there, somewhere, and was responding to him. He would convince her that this wasn't his fault. She would see.

"What choice did I have, den? Our parents were all best friends since dey was kids, our daddies and our mommas. Dey from a different time, dey don' understand that a man an' a woman can be just friends. Dey saw us always tagether and dey got da wrong idea, and ya know dey weren't da only ones from da elders." There was no anger or frustration in his voice just as there wasn't any in his heart, but his tone was pointed and insistent. He felt that she wasn't being fair.

"Ya know my daddy's condition, Thawa," he pushed out in a controlled speed. He didn't want to sound angry, but he needed to speek before she interrupted him. She needed to hear this. "He be a lot older than my momma and ya parents, and ever since his heart failed him he just been talkin' about grandkids all da time. What was I supposed ta do? Tell him that he had ta wait another year, tell him again dat it wasn' time with no explanation? What if his heart stopped on him again? What about all da pressure on ya momma since..."

He hesitated before the next part. "Ya sister be younger dan ya and she got married already. It be wrong, Thawa, ya know me and ya know I don' agree with that kinda thinkin'. But what was I gonna do? Dey all decided we was ta get married before I even came back from da war, dey already decided and made plans for us. Ya wanted me ta fight da whole village, da whole culture?"

He paused there. He felt like he wanted to say more but it must have been overwhelming for her at that point. Their friendship had always been very balanced and they both took care to let each other speak, even though she was the elder when they were children. It was time for him to shut up and see what she had to say.

Zulwatha slipped her feet into a pair of thong house sandals custom made for troll feet and pulled her gown down over her thighs. She sat still on the chair, her hands folded over her stomach as she stared at the floor.

"Go ta ya new job in da Barrens. Be da good provider dey want ya ta be. Get buried in ya work an' stay dere. Ain't no reason for ya ta come back four times a year."

Still as a statue, she sat on her chair and continued staring at the floor. He waited for her to say something, anything, to break the silence. But she did not. She had said her piece and was done for the night. He decided not to push it.

His own eyes became downcast at his failure to help his former best friend feel better. What made it even worse was the fact that she was clearly blaming him for this. He meant every word he said, about not having been able to fight the entire culture, but her refusal to acknowledge that stung him as though it was his fault. Defeated, he crawled onto his side of the bed and lied down with his back to her. He wasn't ready to sleep, but the tension was so thick that he could't sit up straight under its mass. Leaving the bedroom wasn't an option, given that his mother and mother-in-law were staying in the same hut that night. He could hear their hushed voices drifting up the hall from the bedroom on the opposite side of the long hut. The partitions between the rooms and halls weren't strong enough as sound barriers.

"We can' sleep yet."

He looked over his shoulder to see her standing at the foot of the bed with her hands at her sides, her downcast eyes focused on some spot on the bedsheets. Her head was crooked down as she waited for a response.

Her obvious disappointment depressed his mood and extinguished any excitement he felt when he first entered the bedroom he was to share with her for the first time. There was no way he could perform in a situation like this.

"Ya don' gotta worry about dat, girl," he mumbled. "Ya don' gotta deal with me or be around me. I'm gonna respect ya space."

"No." Her voice was monotone yet still managed to sound matter-of-factly despite her lack of enthusiasm for even uttering the word. "It be different for ya. Dey all gonna judge me based on how soon."

It was almost as if she were trying to fill the air with as much awkwardness and discomfort as possible. "Thawa, da Darkspear be a part of da Horde now. Things be different, da Warchief even made gender equality one of da two stipulations for us joinin' -"

"Ya know dat doesn' change anything out here in da villages," she droned, cutting him off.

In the un-sexiest way possible, she pinched her underwear through her gown and shoved it down, allowing it to drop to her ankles. Like an Ironforge golem, she mechanically crawled onto the bed next to him and lied down unceremoniously on her back. Her knees were up in the air, though other than that her limbs were as limp as a corpse. For a split second, he saw a glint of sadness rush over her face before she closed her eyes and forced it away. It pained him to see the person who was once closest to him so distant and hurt, yet fighting his every attempt to make things better.

He was propped up on his right elbow, shifting between watching her eyelids and staring at the curtains. There was no romance or sexual chemistry between them even as best friends. Now she even seemed to be trashing their friendship, making it feel like two uncomfortable strangers forced to split a room.

Zulwatha moved her knees a bit further apart as she draped her entire left arm over the upper part of her head. Her forehead, eyes and nose were now hidden from his vision.

"Let's get dis over with," she rasped in a voice that was as far from sultry as one could conceive. She was being serious.

He let out a long sigh as he sat up, hesitating for a long time. She didn't budge, doing her best to demonstrate to him that she didn't want this, didn't want him, didn't want anything other than the morning to come.

Slowly, he slid off and stood at the end of the bed to remove his sarong. This was not how he had ever imagined his wedding night would be.

**A/N: For those wondering about Zulwatha's ultimate fate (I received a lot of PMs), I will say the following. Characters in my stories who receive names will appear more than once. It may be across several stories and some appearances may be cameos, but their tales aren't finished. Think of all the people you pass by in your every day life; you never get to know most of them. That's the case with my stories: most of the characters are in the background and nameless, like people passing by somewhere. Those with names are intended to appear again, and Zulwatha pops in to ****You, Me &amp; Us**** as well as oneshots I've planned for ****Domestication****.**


	3. High Hopes for ya Kid

**A/N: This chapter depicts torture. While it doesn't go as far as some of the coming chapters, it might be unpleasant to read for those sensitive to graphic violence and/or who have friends or family who were themselves victims of torture or abuse. Please keep that in mind before deciding whether or not to read on.**

_Eight years ago._

The Mor'shan Rampart was a bustle of activity that day, with peons moving in waves as they attended to the humble expansion projects funded by the Warsong Outriders. While the camp once occupied only the elevated ledge leading to the tunnel entrance of Warsong Gulch, there was now a respectable spawl of buildings on ground level down below. A long, sturdy fence of metal and wood formed the new border of what was now the Mor'shan camp, while a decent amount of empty space between the rising buildings and longhouses reminded anyone who visited that they still weren't in an urban area.

The organization was a mess of impressive, controlled chaos. The main headquarters of the Outriders had now moved to a large, circular town hall building in the center of the expanded camp. The architecture was traditional orcish, with impossible long strips of kodo leather and large animal bones decorating the roof of the second floor, which still needed some finishing touches. The original Warsong barracks were being expanded as two more communal housing units for the troops were almost done. The peons and other service workers were sharing orcish burrows, tauren teepees or troll huts. A handful of Forsaken emissaries had adopted the orcish stye for the shelter covering their alchemy table and...well, nobody was quite sure if he Forsaken slept nor were they brave enough to venture inside the shelter. Were there beds or coffins?

A large kodo beast grunted as it pulled a flatbed of new recruits wearing civilian clothes and each carrying a duffel bag of personal effects. The were all squatting, ten men and women of diverse backgrounds, admiring the burgeoning camp in awe. The older, more experienced Outriders strutted around with their custom made boots or trotted slowly on their timber wolves, all of them displaying the chips on their shoulders proudly.

A skinny, bald-headed Darkspear youth hopped down off the flatbed, holding the strap of his bag with one hand as it rested on his back. His long, proud tusks and facial war paint masked his youth and the jungle troll quietly took in the activity around him with wide eyes. He was tall, taller than even most of the tauren at the camp, but his size conflicted with the nervousness he exuded. He rubbed his hand on his clean-shaven chin, not knowing where to go next. The three skulls hanging from his built and the war paint all donned outside of combat were out of place. It was all a sight that was difficult to miss.

One of the officers, a middle-aged orc, began spying the greenhorn and sizing up his appearance. To say the young man stood out in a crowd was an understatement. Enraptured, he didn't even notice that the officer was approaching until the orc was standing almost underneath his chin. With a snap of his fingers, he got the youth's attention and gave a smirk that somehow smacked of both cockiness and welcoming at the same time.

"You're the new transfer from the north Barrens highways, right? The guy interviewing for the position with the prisoner holding cells?" The orc had put his fists on his hips and puffed his chest out, speaking with an inquisitory tone.

The jungle troll's ears perked up. "Ya, that be me," he said, looking just a little too eager. "I hope this is the right place!"

"This is definitely the right place," the officer said with confidence. "Follow me to the new jail we just finished, they'll want to meet with you in there. The two started walking off to the eastern face of the mountainside, moving away from the elevated ledge leading to the actual Gulch. They were silent as they moved around and in between more workers carrying various tools and materials and marching on to new tasks. Everyone was so busy and the rural camp had the feel of a busy city street.

It took only a minute or so of fast walking to reach the front doors of the jail. It had been built straight back into a large crack within the mountainside, three sides all closed off from potential escapees. There was a fenced off yard with a few trees and some tables next door, trash littering the ground insinuating that it could be a recreational area. The troll was so overwhelmed by his surroundings that he hadn't had a chance to take everything in, and likely wouldn't even remember his way back to the front gate despite the short distance. In a blur, the front door was opened and the two walked inside an anteroom with chairs on little alcoves lining each side, and a second door within. There was a second anteroom after the second door, only this time the left and right sides each held offices while the third door was hanging open. The building was obviously designed in the longhouse style, and the hall after the third door was lined with jail cells and a heavier iron door at the very back. Before he had even realized how far into the bowels he had gone, the troll was whisked into the office on the left.

"This is him, Captain," the officer who had led him in said as though they had been anticipating the interview. That only added to his nervousness.

Standing before him in a small room were two more orcs and another troll. His fellow Darkspear tribesman stood next to the door and against the wall, his regalia insinuating that he was also an officer. There was a wooden table in the middle of the room, while the orc addressed as "Captain" was seated to the right side, his arms folded as he laid his head back against the wall. He was also wearing his armor, the distinctive Warsong regalia inspiring more awe in an already awestruck teenager. Most impressive, however, was the second orc who leaned against the wall opposite the door. He was dressed in white and black civilian robes, his hair slicked back with far too much gel. He held a custom made porcelain coffee mug which never seemed to empty. Everything about him exuded coolness.

The officer who had led the jungle troll to the room left and shut the door while exiting, and he now realized that he was standing in a quiet room without saying anything. He was not normally an awkward person - making friends was rather easy for him - but the significance of the occasion had caused a slight stupor to befall him.

The captain didn't wait much longer. "Please, take a seat," he said as he motioned with his hand. The troll sat down and laid his bag on the floor, leaning in the captain's direction and waiting for him to lead the way. The captain took his cue and started things off.

"Alright, I'm Captain Bralag and my associate here is Nokar," he said nodding toward the second orc who was still nursing his coffee. "I'm going to tell you what we know, and then you can tell us what you know, and it should all be downhill after that."

"Sounds fine, mon," he replied quickly. Any anxiety he had was quickly fading away.

"So they tell us that you're Garot'jin, you're nineteen years old with your legal residence listed as Sen'jin Village. You served during the Third War, guarding the rear of Horde forces contribution to the Battle of Mount Hyjal and defended the supply train through Ashenvale from demons and raids by locals. You've been guarding the highways of the north Barrens for the past year, and by all measures you have a reputation for honesty, discretion and swift dealings with enemies of the good people of the Horde. You recently had your first child - congratulations, by the way - and are looking for a position with a slightly more solid future than your current one. Does that sound about right?"

Captain Bralag's tone was cordial and polite, despite his obvious years of experience on the battlefield. He wasn't exactly warm, but he did make the troll feel respected and honored to be there.

"It all be true," he answered with the typical accent of his people when speaking Orcish. "So now you wanna hear what I know?"

"Please," replied Bralag.

"Well, currently the Outriders be expandin their operations in the forests, what with all the new demand from the colonization of Kalimdor. Alliance scum has continued attackin our civilians in the area and there be renewed efforts to press those blue and gold bastards as much as possible. Now, they be sendin spies and harassin our towns, and there be plans to use prisoner swaps and ransomin to moderate their behavior." The troll took a breath. "Does that sound about right?"

Captain Bralag grinned. "Yes, they seem to have informed you well. Did they tell you what we want you for specifically?"

"Well, they mentioned somethin about the prisoner swappin and that they needed someone to keep an eye on the inmates, makin sure they don' rebel or escape or anythin. That's all I know."

Bralag and Nokar shot each other approving nods before Bralag turned back to the young troll. "I'm going to turn things over to my associate Nokar, now. He can bring you up to speed on what it is we need done and if this is the right decision for you." The troll nodded, his interest quite apparent on his painted face as his eyes remained wide and he leaned forward.

Nokar slurped some of his coffee before sauntering over to the chair opposite Garot'jin and seated himself. He smoothed his hair back with his palm before smiling and leaning back. His interviewee subconsciously mimicked his action, garnering a snicker from the other troll guarding the door.

"So they say you're a Shadow Hunter, right? A voodoo warrior who mixes dark with light, correct?" Nokar's first question caught the troll by surprise, as he didn't see the relation to the activities of the brand new Warsong jail.

"Wha? Oh, well, I was trained by Shadow Hunters of our tribe, but I don' claim to be one of them. I ain't at that level yet," Garot'jin admitted. These guys seemed like they would smell through any bullshit he could try to pass their way. "Why?"

Nokar talked with his hands as well, his movements quickly punctuating everything he said. "That means you know how to intimidate, right?"

Now it was clear. "Yeah mon, many a bandit and harpy witch just high tailed it from the highway when I got too close," he said with legitimate pride. Bralag turned to the nameless officer guarding the door behind Garot'jin's back and shot him an approving nod.

"You apparently also kept close tally of whoever you caught out there, what crimes they had committed and at what time," Nokar stated rather than asked.

"Ya mon."

"And you're said to be discreet about keeping secrets."

"Yep."

Bralag shot Nokar another grin, though Nokar was too engaged in the fast discussion now. Garot'jin was eager to hear more and Nokar seemed enthusiastic in almost every word he said. It would have seemed excessive and fake to anyone other than the young troll at that moment.

"Alright," Nokar started as be slurped some more coffee. "Here's how it goes. The most important part of the job we need you to do is discretion. The Alliance, in their cowardice, has resorted to spying and information stealing in order to get ahead in the mini-war we have here at Warsong Gulch. They're rumor mongoring in the neutral zones and pushing the higher ups in Orgrimmar more and more to hear complaints from their lying emissaries from Theramore. The information the Alliance steals here has costs us the lives of a lot of good men and women, soldiers and civilians." Nokar looked down at the tabletop dramatically. "It's a damn shame, the damage they've caused. They're preventing our people from vital resources we need to survive on this harsh continent."

Garot'jin could already feel the rage building within him. "Scum of all Azeroth, these maggots be." His brow furrowed as he grumbled the sentence, overacting as he tried to display his solidarity with the more senior men in the room. He noticed Captain Bralag flashing a thumbs up to the nameless officer.

Nokar continued. "So the most important thing we need from you here - if you choose to accept this position - is the keeping of secrets, the hoarding of information. Wars in this new modern world are won not only with strength like the Horde, but with information. You won't simply be guarding prisoners waiting to be ransomed or exchanged: you will be gathering and protecting top secret information."

Garot'jin beamed. They were trusting him with top secret information. Him! His head swelled.

"It goes without saying that the prisoners we capture here are often aware of what's happening behind enemy lines, what attacks are being planned, where troops are being moved." Nokar had put his custom made coffee cup down on the table top now, and was all seriousness. "That information is significant, as I am sure you can imagine. It isn't just about the resources we need to live our lives, to build homes for our families. It's about the innocent lumberjacks these Alliance cowards murder in their hit-and-run attacks. Countless innocent lives have been lost, and more will be lost if we don't up the ante a little. That's where you come in, Groty."

The jungle troll felt high as a kite now. Groty! A nickname! These were very important representatives of the Warsong Outriders. They not only trusted him with top secret information, but had given him a nickname already. Garot'jin - Groty - had already made his decision to accept the job at this point in the interview.

"It's no secret that the Outriders have suffered from some bad PR, lately," Nokar sighed. "Many of these lies were spread by the Alliance diplomats from Theramore during their visits to Orgrimmar."

Groty was shocked. "It still be amazin that they allowed to visit the capitol," he murmered.

"It's politics. I don't pretend to understand it; we're results-oriented here, you know?" Nokar shrugged his shoulders and smiled as he said it, and Groty found himself smiling even though he didn't quite know what any of that meant. The expression didn't seem relevant to what Nokar was trying to describe, but the confidence with which he said it quickly won the young man over.

Nokar pressed on, never seeming to grow tired of talking. "They've even spread rumors that Warsong has lost the approval of the Warchief, that Orgrimmar wants to open up negotiations with Darnassus and settle things through treaties." Nokar snorted haughtily. "All lies and impossible anyway, I can assure you."

Groty stroked his hairless chin with one hand, his elbow resting on the table. He was in deep thought but also did his best to make that apparent to his interviewers. He could no longer contain himself. "I'll do it!"

Captain Bralag grinned with approval. Groty continued to look at Nokar, waiting for his answer.

"Well, slow down there," the orc cautioned. "Let's go over what will be expected of you first."

"Of course!" Groty said matter-of-factly. His own confidence seemed to be growing while in Nokar's presence.

"Here is where discretion comes in. There are certain...rules of warfare. The Horde is not a band of marauding bandits. When the weaklings of the Alliance surrender or are captured alive on the battlefield, they are entitled to certain rights," Nokar explained, using his fingers to signal quotation marks when he came to the word 'rights.' "We must provide them with food, water, shelter, yadda yadda. What can we do, right?"

Groty nodded despite not understanding what sort of complications there could be.

"So we take care of these prisoners," Nokar said with a raised hand. He spoke as someone disgusted with the arrogance of another person, squinting his eyes and curling his upper lip as he said it. "They have the information on what massaces and pogroms are being plotted against our innocent peons, but they just eat our food and drink our water without cooperating. In addition to monitoring the stock of food and water, giving them the basic care, we need you to convince them to help us save a lot of people. Sometimes, this requires a bit of intimidation."

Groty couldn't hide the wide grin on his face as his heart rate increased. He was essentially being promised members of the Alliance on a silver platter, all while still following these complicated rules of war. They eat, he receives answers, lives are saved. It seemed like a dream job.

Nokar leaned forward now, looking Groty in the eye. "A lot of people will depend on you, Groty. I will do my best to help you learn the ropes during the next three days, but we need to you keep accurate records, write everything down and keep your methods on the down-low." Nokar's voice became a bit quieter now. "This is _the_ most important job in the Mor'shan Rampart."

Groty stared back at Nokar blankly, trying to wrap his head around what he was being told. This was a great honor and responsibility. He sat up straight now, looking down to the left for a moment as he took it all in.

"If this is all acceptable to you," Nokar said while leaning back, "then we can show you to your quarters at HQ - along with all the other _officers_ \- and prepare for your three-day crash course." He picked up his coffee cup again as he smoothed his hair back one more time. He looked back at Groty with relaxed shoulders, as though he were chatting with an old buddy. "Are you in?"

It only took a few seconds. "Inner than in."

The next few minutes were hazy in Groty's mind, his excitement no longer containable. The men all shook hands and talked about nothing for a few moments before the orcish officer that had first found him in the camp returned to show him to his quarters. Starstruck, Groty followed the middle-aged officer out the door and back to the HQ building.

* * *

"You're the beast!"

"I the beast!"

"Who's the beast?"

"I the beast!"

Groty jogged in place a little, causing the creases in his white apron to shift audibly. It had been four days since their interview, and he and Nokar were back in the same room, alone. Nokar was also standing, taking a step back from the half-empty reports on the wooden table. He shuffled, almost seeming like he was about to jog in place as well.

"We caught him this morning, wandering by himself a bit too closely to the Gulch," Nokar huffed. "He smelled of alcohol and probably wandered off. This is a serious matter Groty, and a great opportunity to prove yourself."

The gravity of the situation was not lost on the troll. He was nervous, though the quick jumping jacks he was now doing were taking the edge off a bit. The past three days had been a whirlwind, though his mind was sharp enough to remember the important details.

"So what we got, boss?"

Nokar smirked at the troll's enthusiasm. "It's a human, obviously, and there aren't many humans this far north in Kalimdor. We fear that the elves could be adding some human units to the ranks of the Silverwing Sentinels in a desparate attempt to stave off our retaliation for their treachery." He was too winded to put up his usual front now. "This fellow isn't talking, though, and we need you to convince him to show some gratitude for the food and shelter he's been provided. We need to know if there is some sort of an Alliance troop surge, and if so, we'll need to know the numbers, the time frame, planned locations, et cetera, et cetera."

Nokar put a hand on Groty's shoulder and looked him hard in the eye. The troll stopped his exercises and listened closely, knowing there was some sort of important bottom line coming.

"It's always easier if your first interrogation is of another man. There will be less sympathy. But always keep in mind, either way, that these are the bad guys. They're killers, and given the opportunity they would do far worse to you."

Groty pounded his left fist into the palm of his other hand and shouted, "We showin him whose boss!" Nokar chuckled, unsure of how closely the troll was paying attention but enjoying his motivation nonetheless. Before he had even realized it, Nokar had whisked him into the second anteroom and down the hallway, opening the heavy iron door at the end for him.

"Your interrogation tools are on the metal table in the corner," Nokar said as he ushered Groty into the room. The iron door shut with a loud click.

Seated before Groty was a bruised human man wearing brown rags for clothes, his upper lip swollen underneath his blonde mustache. He had ear length hair but aside from that, he was like any other human - Groty could never tell them apart very well. His gaze was steely and he legitimately seemed unafraid. His wrists and ankles were strapped down into the padded chair he sat on.

Groty had seem the chamber before during his crash course. It was all metal from floor to ceiling, lit only by two candles on the floor in the back corners. To the right of the door was the metal table Nokar had mentioned. The entire place was sparkling clean. Groty sauntered over to the metal table without saying a word to the human, doing his best to display the chip on his shoulder. There was a light brown towel with some objects protruding from underneath. Pulling it aside, he found a sheet of parchment, a quill and an inkwell for jotting down confessions from the prisoners. Right next to those were a scalpel and a pair of pliers.

The confidence Groty had felt before drained quickly with the realization of what he had to do. Nokar never used language which directly indicated that Groty was to harm anybody, but the implication was obvious during the past three days. What would a Shadow Hunter or any other fighter do to intimidate anyone? Shout at them? Shake their fists? Jump up and down? No, what he had to do was much more serious than that.

Groty was unprepared for the internal conflict he felt upon looking under the towel. This was supposed to be easy, he was supposed to be ready. Yet now he found himself conflicted. This member of the Alliance had come to the camp quietly after his capture, trying to preserve his dignity most likely. There was no challenge in hurting him, no victory, no glory. Groty put the towel back down to cover the tools up again.

"I demand to know what this is all about. Nobody is telling me anything!" Groty turned to see the human speaking to him indignantly. He had been trying to find someone who spoke or understood Common all day, and had likely just been speaking to everyone who walked by in his desperation. Groty couldn't speak well, but he understood everything the human was saying.

Before he could even let the human know that he wasn't wasting his time, the barrage came. "I'm your prisoner! A prisoner of war! You're obligated to at least inform me as to when I can expect to be released." Was this guy serious? Groty knew full-well that such unwritten agreements existed between the Alliance and the Horde. Still, it took a lot of audacity to demand those rights so insistently in a world of so much bloody conflict.

Groty was already walking toward the chair before the human had finished, and placed his right hand on the back of the padding, his wrist uncomfortably close to the human's head. It wasn't enough, and the human refused to show any fear. Perhaps if Groty could find what he was afraid of, what intimidated him, there would be no need to use the tools left on the table. Perhaps bruising the human up a bit more would help Groty to avoid injuring him. Beating up on someone who can't fight back...well, it's dirty, rotten and low, but so is any schoolyard bullying. That was a much more palpable thought then cutting up someone held still to a chair like some psychotic mad scientist.

"What name, rank you?" Groty asked in his broken Common. He made sure to punctuate the question by jabbing his finger roughly between the human's eyes. Intimidation. That's what he wanted. The realization was dawning on Groty now. This human was the enemy, but he was a captive. He had lost, they had won. Groty didn't want to hurt him, not outside of actual combat anyway. He tried in vain to push out the realization that he didn't want the job he had just accepted a few days ago.

"_I _am Corporal William Armarant, knight of Stormwind, protector of the-"

The human's sentence was cut short when Groty punched him in the chest, knocking the wind right out of him and rocking the entire padded metal chair. There, that wasn't so hard. He felt like a bully, like a coward, and he hated the feeling because he...he wasn't like that. He didn't want to believe he was. Maybe the one punch would be enough to get the man to talk. Then it would all be over. And if not...maybe it would help get Groty used to the idea of hurting a restrained man.

_That's cowardly_. Groty paused for a moment. It was the same inner voice which had begun taunting him in the back of his mind after the Third War. A constant foe and occasional voice of reason judging his actions. He ignored it and translated the question in his head from Orcish to Common before the human could quite catch his breath.

"You, human. You in Ashenvale. More human there? More attack plan?" Groty's voice was anything but intimidating, almost coming off as friendly. This just a few seconds after he had punched the human so hard that it would have knocked down an ogre. He tried his best to scowl as he stared the human down, trying to compensate for his tone with a scary face.

"A true knight does not betray his brethren," Armarant coughed, a bit of blood spilling onto his chin. "Your savagery will not get you the answers you want. You're wasting your time." His bravery in the face of a possible beating was admirable. Yes, Groty couldn't deny it, he admired a member of the Alliance. He was most likely a killer of peons, imprisoner of innocent orcs, burner of Horde villages...but Groty didn't know that for sure. He felt as though he had already lost a battle inside himself and was only delaying the inevitable.

The thought of hitting the small human again was quickly destroying Groty's focus. This was his first day on the job, and the very first day there was an interrogation with a stalwart knight. If he screwed this up, he would be out of a job and too embarrassed to show his face in the Barrens again. He had to suck it up and make the pink thing talk. He repeated that to himself, shutting out the voice in his head scolding him for his actions.

Intimidation, he thought. This is what you do. Scare him.

Groty placed his big, round thumb underneath the human's nose, applying just a tiny bit of pressure - only enough to make Armarant's eyes water. He asked again: "More human in Ashenvale? More attack plan? Why human in elf land?" The knight refused to even angle his head upwards to avoid the troll's thumb, holding his ground.

"A curse be upon you, foul beast!" the human shouted. "I bear these wounds for the sake of protecting our allies!" It was cliche and uninspiring, but the determination in the human's voice was clear. This wasn't going to be easy. Groty wouldn't be able to just punch the human into submission. He obviously believed in his cause, as phony and morally bankrupt as Groty found the Alliance to be, and the human was willing to suffer for what he believed in.

_What do you think you're doing_, asked his inner voice. _Really, answer that. It isn't rhetorical._ It was a question he didn't want to think about.

Taking a deep breath, Groty gripped the back of the human's head with his other hand and pressed his thumb about four times as hard underneath Armarant's nose. The human cried out in pain as Groty felt the nosebleed spill out onto his thumb. The cartilage shattered underneath, and he avoided looking the knight in the face for fear of seeing what he had done.

_What did you do? What did you just do? What are you thinking?_ The voice was becoming more powerful now. _This isn't a battlefield or even a real fight. This man had obeyed direct orders from officers of an opposing faction during his imprisonment and his only crime is not answering questions_. Everything Nokar had tried to pound into Groty's head during the past few days was spilling out, fast.

"I am a knight of Stormwind, protector of the weak, vanquisher of the evil!" The human's defiance was incredible. Groty shuddered at the thought of what it would feel like to have his own nose broken like that. It was ugly to look at, almost painful to see. The human was a recalcitrant bastard, but breaking his nose didn't feel like an appropriate response. Logically, he new such a thing was what the Outriders expected of him. But it didn't *feel* right. He wanted to stop.

_Then stop doing it. Stop this now._

No, Groty forced himself to think. He accepted this job. This human, this Corporal Armarant, was the scum of all of Azeroth. He was a criminal, a killer, the enemy combatant. Down in Warsong Gulch, they would be at each others' throats. Why should things be different here in the chamber?

_He's a beaten man. When the man is down, you don't kick him._

Trying to shut the arguments of his subconscious out, Groty forced himself back over to the table and uncovered the tools, taking the scalpel in one hand and the pliers in the other. He had wasted too much time. The longer he waited, the less likely he would be to get the job done. Nokar told him to prove himself. The pressure was on. He remembered the members of the Alliance he had killed during pitched battles in the northern Barrens, their crumpled bodies before him never having causes any feelings of guilt before.

_Those were combatants. This is a man tied to a chair._

No, he was a combatant at one time. He may have killed some of Groty's comrades. Yes, of course he did. He's a killer. Don't listen to the voice inside, he told himself. Listen to Nokar. He knows better.

"I demand to see your superior officer!" Corporal Aramarant had raised his voice again. "The Horde promised Lady Proudemoore that things were different now. There would be rules now. I am a prisoner of war! You can't do this!" His voice held anger now, but no fear. The human wouldn't budge. Slowly, Groty turned around, the scalpel and pliers held out so the human could take a good, long look.

"You tell. Tell how many human. How many dwarf. How many new Alliance in elf land. You no tell, I take this," Groty pronounced slowly, tapping the knight's fingernails with the scalpel. He didn't know the words for 'fingernail' in Common, but the message was clear. He had reached over to tap the human's nails with his long arm, and stayed back against the metal table. It was more a defense mechanism than a threat. Groty felt very exposed now. He felt a lot of evil things inside him he never knew existed, and now it was held out for him to see. The Horde was about strength and honor. There was no strength in tearing up the flesh of a man in chains, no honor in inflicting pain on someone who couldn't fight back. The inner voice's cries in the back of his head were redundant. Groty had accepted a despicable, honorless job.

Before he could realize what was happening, Groty smelled the disgusting stench of saliva as the human lunged forward with his neck as far as he could and spit on the troll's face. "I know a weakling when I see one," the pink thing shouted. "You don't have the guts!" The human had been defiant before, but now he was beyond belligerent even. The challenge was on. Groty had to make a decision. He had been called a weakling. Was it true if he backed down from a prisoner when he was the jailer? Was it true if he carried on, disgustingly scarring the man tied to a chair?

_He isn't going to say anything. You can stop this game now._ His inner voice wouldn't give up. _You're not cut out for this. You're not this type of person. Even if this occurs in the world, you're not the one to do it._

Wiping the spit from his face with the white apron, Groty stared the human down, though no reaction was given. Corporal Armarant was silent now, the anger apparent on his face but confident that he had won. His bloody mustache taunted the troll, rubbing it in. Groty took a step forward from the table slowly, slouching down low now.

_Just go. This isn't you. You know that._

The inner voice was wrong. Groty would show this human. He would show Nokar. He would show Bralag. He could do this. He reached out and clasped one of the human's fingers lightly between the pliers, not yet applying any pressure.

"How many human, how many dwarf come elf land. Where they come. When they come. You tell, or you lose." He squeezed the knight's fingertip a bit when he came to the word 'lose.'

_You KNOW this is wrong! Don't pass this onto Nokar! You're not being forced! This is YOUR choice and nobody else's!_

The human continued staring silently, the bleeding from his nose having stopped. He gulped audibly, but his face didn't betray any fear. Groty held the pliers on the human's one finger, and stepped forward with his body. He was towering over the seated, restrained human now, glaring down at him with a fury which didn't feel like his own. For the first time, the human was now avoiding eye contact.

_You can't do this! You don't want this!_

"Last chance you. You tell now. Tell all thing. Or lose this thing," Groty said in a tone that was finally threatening. The deep, baritone grumble crawled up from within his throat in a way he had never heard himself speak before. The motor strip on the top of his brain was vibrating as though he had smoked too much ganja in one sitting, and there was a sourceless white noise filling his long ears now.

_Stop! STOP!_

Groty sucked in a quick breath and grit his teeth.

* * *

He was alone in the chamber now, squatting on the floor in front of a metal rubbish bin and a bowl of water. His hands trembled as he cleaned off his own vomit and the human's blood, rinsing his fingers over the bin to allow the runoff to drip down. There were some blood stains on the floor in front of the empty chair as well as on his white apron, but the vomit was more apparent to both the eyes and the nose.

Rising slowly to avoid throwing up again, Groty lurched over to the metal table and wiped his hands and face off with the light brown towel. The bloody scalpel and pliers were there, along with the recently used quill and inkwell. The parchment had been slipped to Nokar through the door as soon as Groty had finished jotting down all the details and an attendant had dragged the human back to his cell thereafter. The officers would certainly be deliberating over the information gained in HQ and making preparations for the following day. Groty was surprised at how easy it had been to get all the information out...once he...

_It wasn't easy, you piece of trash,_ his subconcious screamed. _You hated every minute of it. You're doing a job you hate that will make you hate yourself._

Walking down the hall to the exit, Groty avoided looking at the weeping heap in one cell that was once a brave knight. It wasn't likely that he would ever wield a weapon again. He tried to convince himself that was a good thing, one less soldier for the Alliance. Yet he knew he was lying to himself.

Grappling with the thoughts in his head, Groty hurried out of the jailhouse and almost jogged back to HQ. He didn't know why he was hurrying; if anything, he should be delaying his walk there to clear his head for what he had to do. He had to quit. It wasn't the right job for him, he had some personal problems back in Sen'jin Village to take care of...anything. Any excuse. He needed a reason to pull out.

_About time. About damn time. After you scar a defenseless prisoner in your charge for life, you decide that YOU can't take it. That's rich._ He thought he was going crazy, two different parts of his brain arguing with each other.

Without even realizing it, he had burst through the doors of the Warsong HQ building now and was jolted by the blast of color and noise. Nokar, Bralag, all the other officers had formed a semi-circle around the main entrance as they clinked beer mugs together. Where did they get beer? There's no bar here, he wondered. He was fairly certain the sole Forsaken in attendance set off a fire spell in the air for no readily available reason.

Before he could open his mouth to explain why he had to leave, Nokar and Bralag had already each taken him by an arm and dragged him to the middle of the room.

"This guy, this is the guy!" Nokar exclaimed. "Because of Garot'jin here, we now have precise timetables for the movements of the new units the Alliance has assigned to southern Ashenvale!"

Groty looked down, not wanting to hear this. He couldn't remember how long Nokar had praddled on for or how many times the officers had applauded. He felt the pressure mounting. Bralag interjected with something about saving lives, and Groty acquiesed as he felt a beer mug shoved into his hand. They were cheering for him, they were thanking him, they were happy for him. Yet he couldn't share in their happiness.

A poke from Nokar snapped him back into reality. The orc was looking at him expectantly now. Had he missed a question?

"You just earned us a major confession on your very first day on the job. The Silverwing Sentinels and their allies from the east won't even know what hit them! How do you feel?"

Groty looked at Nokar and then at all the waiting officers gathered around him. A measure of the awe he had felt on his first day was recognizable in their eyes now.

"It be a...a great feelin. For the Horde." It was a battle just to avoid sounding disinterested in his own lie as he raised his mug for a toast. He choked his self-loathing down, and as they all started laughing and boasting about the preparations for tomorrow, Groty felt himself die a little inside.


	4. What Should I Do?

**A/N: This scene depicts torture, indirectly but still vividly like the previous chapter. Without exaggeration, this and chapter 8 are the worst chapters in the whole story in terms of how painful and difficult it might be to read. If you or a loved one have ever been victimized or abused in the past, then it may not be adviseable to read on; I don't want to be the cause if anyone else's stress or mental anguish.**

**As an aside, please remember that there is a purpose to this. I hope that readers don't mistake the story for something violent for the sake of violence. It's dark and unpleasant; there is no denying that. It's to demonstrate a point, however. If you will be offended or hurt by implications of graphic violence, this chapter (as well as chapters 3, 5 and 8) might not be for you. If you do decide to read it, please understand that it isn't just a sick fantasy (quite the opposite of a fantasy, actually). There's a message, eventually, before the last chapter.**

_Seven and a half years ago._

Waking up was programmed now. All part of the routine. It was quick, it was efficient, it was with purpose. Make the bed. Fold the sheets. Consume. Routine. Be objective. Don't think.

Waking up is a whole pot of coffee. Coming down from a session in the back room was a joint. Falling asleep at night was a drink. Tobacco was never strong enough.

A knock was heard at the door. "Sergeant Garot'jin, it's time, sir." Reality came back. Time to work. Be objective.

His room within the officers wing of the new HQ building was perhaps the nicest he ever had, despite his size. Groty was a hair above eight-and-a-half feet tall; he had to slouch to avoid bumping his head on the ceiling. The room was longer than it was tall and his bed took up the entire length. The floor, walls and ceiling were wood except for the corners which were reinforced steel. He had a trunk next to the bed only for personal items and the rest of the space was for changing clothes, bed sheets or other actions which required free space. It was his solace, his comfort, and now - technically - the only home he had.

"Uh...Sergeant?" The new recruit waiting outside seemed confused.

There was no reason to keep him waiting. Groty had donned his distinctive Warsong light armor and applied his war paint. Everything was ready. He rose, trying his best not to think about anything. It was the easiest way. Even if he thought about something as mundane as paint drying, his thoughts would find a way back to his shame.

Groty finally forced himself out the door despite every cell in his body screaming not to. He was a lot of bad things, but if there was one good thing he knew about himself, it's that he was incredibly strong-willed when it came to forcing himself to act against his own desires. He could wake up every morning knowing he would be cursing his life by the evening, knowing it was the only option he had. Be objective.

A short walk up the hall of the officers' quarters and he was on the main meeting and planning platfom within the HQ building. Fellow officers looked up and saluted him while failing to do so for others. Groty couldn't exit the building without a lot of back-slapping and high-fiving, putting on his best fake smile to mask how phony it all was. But he couldn't focus on that. No thinking.

He trotted outside and headed toward his jailhouse, jokes about the "slaughterhouse" whispered privately as he passed by groups of workers and soldiers congregated in various places throughout the yard. Most of the heavy construction at the Mor'shan Rampart was winding down, the necessities of a real Horde outpost having recently been completed. The waystation for shipments of lumber further south in Kalimdor had brought new residents and commercial activity, and the Outriders actually had to cordone off the HQ and barracks to keep the civvies out. Anything approaching the jailhouse was solely the domain of the Warsong Outriders, not to be approached by or spoken of in front of outsiders.

Groty arrived to the jailhouse, not quite knowing how he had gotten that far. Not thinking made the days go more quickly. Taking a deep breath before opening the front door, he forced himself to think of misfortune possibly befalling the innocent civilians in the camp. He was doing this for them, he told himself. They need the Outriders. They need him. They need him to do what he does best. Be objective.

He was to the original interview room a few seconds later, Nokar having converted it to a record-keeping room and stationary storage months ago. He was scribbling something down on a sheet of parchment, his face leaning down closely to the wooden table. He was ignoring the grunt next to him, but his eyes lit up when Groty entered the room.

"Sergeant," Nokar said as he rose to stand, "good timing." The two went through the motions of a needlessly complicated fist bump-handshake combination before Nokar handed Groty the sheet of parchment. They remained standing as he explained, slurping his coffee while expressing himself with his free hand.

"This one's a captain, a real veteran here. She'll be a tough nut to crack but she will also know a lot more than the others. We need to know what the hell is going on with those bears. Their troop reductions might imply that the Sentinels are behind this, but something doesn't seem right."

"We moved in the tall bucket of water like you asked, sir," piped up the slightly cross-eyed grunt standing to Nokar's right. "The water is clean like you had asked, too." He saluted for no readily available reason upon finishing his sentence and Nokar and Groty both shot each other smug glances. Their movements followe so closely it was like a mirror image.

"One hour. Tops," Groty preened, the confident arrogance he dishonestly forced into his tone dripping all over the atmosphere.

"I love this guy!" Nokar said to the grunt while pointing at Groty.

_Jackasses, the both of you._

The door swung open at the front of the cell block hallway, its sound spurring the inmates to stir in their cells. There were four on each side, with four on the right and three on the left crawling toward the front of their cages to see who was coming. Groty sauntered in, moving as slow as possible with the slouch characteristic of most Darkspear but not of him. Long ago, he had learned how important intimidation was to his own sanity. Confidence was no longer an issue; he knew he was a sick, self-hating bastard who could inflict pain on the defenseless. If he could elicit enough fright from the captives, then the younger and lower ranking ones would often tell him what he wanted to know without the need for violence. Those were his second most favorite days, his first favorite being the days where he didn't need to interrogate anybody. That was almost half the time during the month now; it wasn't everyday members of Alliance were caught. When they were, he would never press for too much information in a single sitting. Not only would it make coming down after harming people much easier, but it created tension within the prisoners that would - again - often mean harming them more wasn't necessary. Groty was quickly becoming an expert at doing his job by not doing his job.

But not today. This was a captain with the Silverwing Sentinels. He had come to know them well. For thousands of years, they had been patrolling their lands. They were - without question - the most skilled warriors on all of Azeroth. They lacked true strength in his opinion, though. Most of whom they seemed to be killing were his innocent peons and lumberjacks, and their ferocity when cornered caused them to evoke less sympathy than, say, a human or drarf woman would.

_You're a pathetic, lying son of a bitch. Stop narrating your own life like that. You beat up on people who can't fight back. And you hate it._ There it was again. The inner voice in the back of his head. Blocking it out was one of the most important skills he had.

As he passed by the lower ranking Alliance members, he counted five elven Sentinels and two human paladins. All seven of them cast their gazes down as he took turns tossing them bread and dried legumes through the cell bars. Without question, all seven of them scraped the food up off the floor with cupped hands and slid their wooden cups to the front of the cages. They then retreated to the backs of their cells on their bare, dirty feet, hugging their arms close to their brown prison rags as they ate quietly. The two paladins were now the most obedient, humans generally responding with open defiance initially and then humble groveling after enough beatings. The elves were much smarter, tending to keep quiet and aloof and were more accepting of their fates.

Groty picked up a water pot and poured the warm liquid into the cups which had been slid to the fronts of the cages. The water was clean, as he always impressed upon the grunts assisting him. It was one small consolation he was able to give to these miserable souls. Plus, a dead or infected prisoner couldn't pass on information and would cause political problems when it came to prisoner swaps.

Groty laid the water pot down and stopped in front of the eighth occupied cell. The Kaldorei captain sat in a corner, head down and hands wrapped around herself. The other elves looked over in her direction while the humans continued eating. They all knew this was coming. Groty produced the short handcuffs from his pocket and tapped the cell bars with them. Without looking at him, the captain pulled herself up and stepped over to the door, turning around and sticking her hands out through the slot. He cuffed her and opened the door without hesitation, pulling her backward into the hall. The door slammed shut and Groty made sure to march her to the end of the hall as slowly as possible. Asking the Loa for some quick assistance, he was able to close his eyes and look behind his own back as the five other elves left their food and silently stood up in unison. They all walked to the fronts of their cages and gripped the bars, trying to stick their heads out for one last look. None of them spoke a word, but their normally distant facial expressions were broken by the obvious pain and anxiety they felt upon seeing the soundproof chamber door shut with their big sister trapped inside.

* * *

Blue and black. Everything was blue and black. Blue swirls in a big black abyss. Through ways he didn't quite understand, he closed his eyes again and followed her. Followed her into the Light, into the Dream, into wherever night elves go when they die. The spirit walkers of the tauren had taught him how to pull someone back, to save a soul...to SAVE a soul, if it had only been separated from the body for a short time. Groty only knew four spells; if you do something, focus on it and do it well, as his mother used to tell him. It was only a few more seconds before he found a wisp. Where he found it, he could not explain. It was afraid of him, but more afraid of where it was headed. He reached out in a way he didn't understand - not with a corporeal limb - and pulled it close to him. The victimized, violated spirit clung to him like an abused child still seeking approval from her sociopathic, uncaring parent. He wanted to tell her he was sorry, to tell her he didn't mean it. He held her tightly against him, and despite her fear she held him right back. It was that moment, that desperation, when he felt a guilt so crushing, so much more overwhelming than anything he had ever felt before, that the true depth of how much he despised himself was revealed.

Groty's back muscles cramped up as the force, the will of the spirit to still live shot them both back.

"Aahh!" It was the voice of Captain Maya Ironwood. Yes, she had given up her name. When did that happen? They were in the hall a minute ago.

_You KNOW when._

He opened his eyes to see the captain slumped over on her side, gasping for air, sniffling from the cold water, coughing and hiccuping at the same time. She was very much alive now. Night elves were tougher than the humans and perhaps even the dwarves, but the shock of literally being killed and then brought back to life was traumatic for anybody. Groty was seated on the floor next to her, at some point having fallen down himself while using his ressurection spell. The water in the barrel was still, so it may have been a while since he had been trying to bring her back.

_How did she get there, Garot'jin,_ the voice hissed. _You remember, don't you. How did she end up on the floor? Why is she gasping for air_.

She fell.

_You're a piece...oh, you know what you are, don't you?_ The hiss became louder until it caused physical pain in his ears. _You know what you are, and you know what you did._

She has a cold. She might have inhaled cold water. No, wait, that's not it...

_Yes, it is. Why would she inhale cold water, Garot'jin?_

There still wasn't much time. Groty could hate himself later. This needed to end. He knew he was near the breaking point as well. It had to be fast.

It took her a few moments to calm down, for her back spasms to cease. It was only then that he noticed her appearance. He had fought so hard to avoid looking at her before, he remembered that much. He had tried to position himself behind her back as he paced, asking her questions about the corrupted...furbolg? Or treants? Was she a captain?

Groty had to check now, to see if she was mentally capable of answering. He scanned her up and down, checking for any marks, injuries, to see her breathing. Aside from choking up water, she didn't seem to have been hurt. Staring at her helped him to relax his heart rate somewhat. He had never found elves physically attractive, but he imagined that among her own people she must have been considered pretty. She looked like a desecrated work of art now, like something so pure which had been spoilt.

But no...she wasn't pure. She was Alliance. She was a Sentinel. She oppressed Horde civilians.

The normal silver glow had faded from her eyes for the time being, and now the whites, corneas and pupils were all discernable from one another. It didn't match her typical Kaldorei face. It was disconcerting to see.

_You did that. She didn't fall. This was you._

The way she was now lying underneath him, upside down to him, put her hips into his full view for the first time. All Kaldorei were lithe, but her hips were particularly curvaceous for their kind. The ratio of the pelvis to the shoulders was large. There was no way to know for sure without knowing the individual, but he was fairly certain this woman had given birth before. It was not something that could always be explained; just a general feeling. If she had given birth, she must have kids. If she had kids...he almost felt stupid doing the math.

Whether they were grown up or not, she was a mother. He had just drowned, killed, murdered, and ripped back the soul of someone's mother. The word kept repeating itself in his head, not even from his subconscious now. No...he didn't kill her and then ressurect her. She fell.

_Your own mother. Imagine that._ The voice forced the image into his head, not allowing him to escape any longer.

This elf was a warrior, a fighter, a cold-blooded killer, he tried to tell himself...but it wasn't working. This was someone who once carried a child in her arms, who watched it grow, who...someone like his own mother.

She used to hold him in the same spot against her collarbone, from infancy through early childhood. Even when he grew up and was much taller than her, she would pull him down when he came to visit and his cheek would find the same crook in her neck to rest on. No matter how tough Groty thought he was, it always made him feel like everything would be okay. Her arms made a force field that could never be penetrated. He would never be rejected at home.

But everything wasn't okay. His mother shoved his head off, waking him from his stupor. He tried to look her in the eye as she leaned her neck back, trying to move away from him. Why is she pushing him away? No, he needs her to be close, to get rid of his pain. To tell him everything would be alright, to tell him it wasn't his fault. His mother wouldn't look at him and he squeezed her tighter, not wanting her to go. Why wouldn't she look at him? What did he do wrong? He locked his hands together in his panic, asking his mother why she was mad at him, asking her what he had done. His mother had never been made at him before. He squeezed to hold on to the only person left in life who he was on good terms with, squeezed her until the life popped out of her glowing silver eyes. "Momma, just look at me, please!"

A yelp finally managed to escape from Captain Ironwood's vocal cords as she wiggled out of his bear hug, the psychotic jungle troll's babbling to her in Zandali almost as terrifying as the thought of having her soul ripped from her body again. Groty released his grip and she fell into a heap on the floor, struggling to suck in the air. He sat, unmoving, eyes burning, heart pounding, trying to wrap his head around what had just happened.

As the captain lay there writhing on the floor, he rose and hurried over to the metal table, hiding the grimace on his face. She lasted longer than the other prisoners and lasted longer than him. Groty was finished. Even if she had lost, he certainly hadn't won. Tucking his chin down to his chest, he snatched the sheet of parchment and quill and hurried back over to her, sitting down near her head now. She was tired, disoriented, and cringing - and thus open to talking. He had to try, or he would quit. He knew he would. He had had enough. Even if he was suffering nowhere near as much as she was, he wasn't as strong as her, and it was too much for him to witness, even if he was the cause.

"Tell me. Tell me of all thing. Please tell me. Tell me, this stop, have food you. Have sleep you." Groty's voice was shaking and unsteady, almost breaking off.

_Please? Do you think she...is saving you? Are you kidding me? You're transferring this onto your victim now? You can't..._ The voice trailed off. It wasn't helping the captain by delaying things.

Captain Ironwood winced and so did he along with her. She rolled onto her side, the tension in her face betraying the deep shame she now felt. She told him. She told him everything. About how the furbolg had become corrupted with fel magic. About how the druids stationed at Silverwing Refuge were succeeding in curing them, and the Sentinels were culling the rest. She told him the exact number of furbolg families infected, where they were hiding, the next date by which a specific number of Sentinels would be sent and how the Refuge would have weak defenses at that time. She told him about how there had been troop reductions due to problems in Felwood which required several units to travel there temporarily. Groty jotted everything down, her story having finished about two minutes before he finished writing. She didn't open her eyes, didn't change positions, didn't move at all.

The Sentinels were the most experienced warriors on all of Azeroth. They were strong, and they did not crack under pressure. What...what did he do? Bubbles. Muffled screaming under the water. It would only come back to him in bits and pieces. Pushing down. Holding. Again. And again. Magic. Mana burn. His heart hurt, physically, with each breath as he tried to forget. Why did his heart hurt?

_Because somewhere in there, deep down, you still know right from wrong. You still want to do what's right. And you can do what's right. You've been here for half a year; you can still pull out without causing conflict with the Outriders._ No matter how many times he went through the motions, the voice would never give up. Always screeching, always lurking, always showing its disapproval. He shoved it down again, knowing it would only crawl back up. But the shove would buy his mind some time.

Groty slipped the parchment out the door to a waiting attendant and closed the door again. He wobbled over to the table, the white noise and motor strip vibration staving off his inner voice and helping him to pretend that didn't just happen. He led her in, and she slipped and fell. Nothing else had happened. He grabbed a blue mana potion from the table and drank it until his power had been replenished. Then he finished the rest of the bottle. And another. And another. And some more. It sloshed in his stomach and gave him a light buzz, loosening him up and causing cold sweat to drip from his forehead. The voice stopped, subdued. The captain remained still the whole time.

* * *

He didn't know how long he had waited before trying to help the elf to stand, only to find that she couldn't move her arms and legs. He looked down and saw the restraints, removing the ankle and handcuffs from Captain Ironwood. Who put those there?

Silence. His head had only one voice in it for now.

He carefully took her by the forearm and helped her up; she offered no resistance, hunching over like him now and covering her face with her free arm. Muscles sore, energy drained, she followed Groty out the door. He led her to her cell and guided her inside with a gentleness that conflicted with what he had a feeling he had just done. It didn't make him feel any better and appeared to make her feel worse. She slumped back in the corner she had originally been sitting in and he actually left the door to her cell open as he walked to the food sack down the hall; the captain remained in the corner, not even considering the possibility of escape. All the other inmates were staring now, their mouths and cheeks pulled tight with stress, their eyes like those of a soldier holding a dying comrade in her arms. He came back and lightly planted the bread and dried beans in the captain's palms and curled her fingers shut, reaching to place a hand on her shoulder before he realized what the hell he was doing. He pulled back, stood up and backed out, abruptly shutting the door.

He lurched to the front end of the hall, noticing a tall, purple-haired Sentinel - taller than most male night elves, almost as tall as Groty himself, with two dark-blue crescent moons tatooed across her eyes and eyelids - poking the captain's foot with one finger. It was likely an attempt at reassuring contact and he let it slide, giving a overacted approving nod to the grunt guarding the hall as he put on his shit-eating grin again.

"You know what it be, solider," Groty managed to utter in Orcish without giving away his disgust. "Dey can use da latrine thrice a day, but no talkin."

"Aye aye," answered the grunt with an unnecessary level of enthusiasm as he saluted.

On his way back to HQ, he finally broke the silence that the inner voice had foisted upon him. Groty was weak, powerless, and alone. He couldn't be strong or powerful, but he didn't have to be alone. He murmered the question out loud.

"What can I do?"

_You know what you can do, you blithering idiot, you worthless gutter scum. You quit. You chose this evil profession, you can choose to quit and save what miniscule sliver of hope there still is for your undeserving soul. _Whatever he had filled his stomach with had worn off as the voice slowly increased in volume. _She didn't force you, with her defiance, to drown her; that was her right as a prisoner of war. The Outriders didn't force you, with their false admiration and machismo, to tear at the flesh of these prisoners; they can't force you to do anything. You chose this. You chose this. You chose this. And one more time: you chose this. You are responsible._

So this was it, then. This was the night. He would finally quit, would run away. To where, he didn't know. Since Zulwatha had filed the divorce papers, he had no home. She had made it clear that he was no longer welcome there. He didn't blame her. She'd been through a lot from the marriage right up until the fight with her parents over the split. He hoped he could still visit his kids sometimes. He had recently been informed that during his last visit two months ago, he had gotten Zulwatha pregnant during what was only the second time they had ever had sex; both times resulted in pregnancy. She had made it clear he wasn't welcome even as a friend anymore, but he still wanted to see his kids.

His mother was in Razor Hill with friends in a small place. The embarrassment of her only son's failure was too much for the widowed housewife to bear, and she could no longer look the neighbors in the eye. Groty had not yet written to her since she had left, fearing how she would react. Even if she had wanted to take him in, he had heard through the grapevine that she was splitting a one-bedroom place with two other women; there was no way he could stay there.

But that didn't matter. He could run away until he found some place that would take him, some inn where they would send him on a quest, where he could just be anonymous and wait for the inevitable time when all his psychological problems would catch up with him and he would have to face down what he had done here at Warsong.

Wait...something was wrong. The HQ was surrounded by grunts now, and a few civilians who were known to be considered VIPs. The main meeting floor of the HQ was packed, and there was a lot of commotion. A few of the new recruits recognized Groty and had seized him before he even had a chance to finish formulating his escape plan for the early morning. Frozen in utter shock, a cheer erupted from the crowd as Groty was pulled toward the center. Nokar, Bralag and two other orcish officers were standing on top of the command table, all the maps having been pinned up around the circular walls. It was overwhelming. His anxiety was mounting at all the attention. Someone he had teleported from the crowd to standing on the long table with Nokar. He could offer no other explanation, other than that or he had blacked out while still standing for a few seconds. He held on to the chandelier made from smooth ivory and gold chains to prevent himself from toppling over in his dizziness, but stretching up to grab it only made him even more visible to the crowd.

"Rejoice!" shouted Nokar. "Now we know the truth, about these crazed bear people, about everything! We have them, we..." Nokar mimicked one of the older officers who had a distinctive way of speaking, punching his fist in the air as he closed one eye and said: "We got 'em!" There was laughter throughout the crowd, especially from the veteran being mimicked.

"They're on the run, their best units in Felwood and their base undefended. Tomorrow at dawn, we ride!" Bralag pumped his fist in the air as another cheer erupted from the several dozen people gathered around.

"This is the guy who got the report," Bralag shouted as he pointed at Groty. "Make sure you give your thanks to Garot'jin here, our information specialist! Hey, give them a few words!"

Pinpricks ran up and down his back as the panic set in. He was being asked to speak and he had barely even wrapped his head around the fact that they were riding out at dawn.

_This is your chance. Don't argue with them. Don't bother convincing them. You're a coward, you know that. You won't be making any stands. Just run. Run. Tell them you need to prepare before dawn tomorrow, so you can disappear. Tell them the lies to hold them over just long enough for your escape. Tell them that you're tired, that you're unwell, that the base needs to be defended while they are gone. This is it. No more waiting. It's time._

Groty looked out over the supportive crowd. Orcs, trolls, tauren, undead, even a few neutrals who had joined as laborers. All eyes were on him, egging him on, prodding him, looking up to him. He had to make a decision now. He inhaled deeply, and made his choice.


	5. Sloth

**A/N: This is not the most violent chapter in the story, but it might be the darkest. Please be prepared for some very awful, downright despicable things here. This is a study in how low a person can sink. As always, this IS building toward something, so please don't think it's just a display of wretchedness without purpose. There is also drug use depicted in addition to physical and mental torture, so beware.**

**If it's any consolation after all the rotten things this guy has done...the title of the next chapter is 'Exposed.' Make of that what you will.**

_Seven years ago._

"An' then she be all like, 'dese braids da work of a professional, an', an', twenny-five silver? Who ya finna ta try?' Dat bitch was all like 'pssh,' and then Mar'liya dropped her right..."

Her orange hair was like fire, unnaturally so - dyed, brighter yet somehow not as vibrant as Thawa's - as she arranged her leather vest in front of a small mirror on the wall, standing in the bedroom's only open space. He sat on the edge of the bed, attempting to toss back his last paper cup of beer before dragging himself outside. For the past two months they had been sharing this room, her presence quickly becoming part of the monotonous daily routine. Most of the time, he wasn't even sure what she was saying. The more he could dampen his mind, the more he could avoid thinking about his life. The cost was his lucidity and he was now finding himself losing chunks of time during the day, forgetting why he had entered rooms or the faces of people whose names he knew well.

Zul'rea was teasing out her mullet now, likely ready to leave. The number of minutes that had elapsed wasn't clear. "So I told her she don' need ta be worryin about cleanin up, my man can get his captives ta handle all dat." She was still doing something as she faced the mirror, though he was just tuning it all out at this point.

At some point between their bedroom in the officer's hall of the HQ building and the foot path toward the jailhouse, Groty remembered being stopped for handshakes and compliments by at least a dozen people. He was sure he didn't know most of them, not by name or face. It was much easier to fake a smirk than a smile, and it had started to become a sort of trademark he had picked up from Nokar. He constantly wore sunglasses while outside even when it wasn't sunny. It was mainly to conceal the redeye from all the coffee, beer and pot he was consuming but it added to the air of arrogant mystique he had around him. The younger recruits ate it up and saw him as some sort of a hero.

The bustle of construction work at the Mor'shan Rampart had finally stopped, the camp now having reached an ideal size for its activities. There were now three barracks forming a sort of triangle around the HQ building, with both a lumber mill and a war mill for processing and manufacturing various industrial materials. The burrows of the peons were still mixed in with the military side of the partition, while the civilian side now had stables, two inns and a small dirt road with shops lining both sides. At least a quarter of the people there at Mor'shan had nothing to do with Warsong Gulch itself, and there was constant foot traffic on both sides of the partition.

The trip to the jailhouse was lost, more moments from his life which would not be missed. The days went by so quickly now, just as he preferred. It was only when Zul'rea walked ahead to meet a group of friends in the fenced off recreational area next to the jailhouse that Groty had even realized she had been clinging to his arm for the entire walk there. He felt drowsy for a moment and he leaned too far forward in the dirt clearing in front of the jail and caught his weight with an extended left foot. He played it off as some kind of a new walk, behaving so nonchalantly that the few grunts who witnessed it were almost ready to start walking like that themselves. He stopped in front of the dark red jailhouse door and waited for it to open all the way for him before entering. He removed a short toothpick from his lips - he didn't remember how it even got there - and pretentiously flicked it to his side with disinterest as he wore his sunglasses into the building.

Groty shuffled in to the first anteroom and then the second, waiting for the same grunt to open the door for him each time. There were now dark red colored carpets on the floors of both anterooms, mainly to catch the dust and blades of grass; it was more difficult to clean that way, but Lorkus, the current Commander, preferred carpet to bare wooden floors. The interview room door was already open, Bralag filling in for Nokar who was at the loading bay receiving an extra large shipment of hair gel. There were now five wooden filing cabinets in the interview room - two directly behind the wooden table laden with papers, two to the left of the door and one to the right. Each of the brown cabinets had four drawers for storing all the reports, rosters and confessions that had been taken down.

Bralag was much less animated than Nokar when he worked at the table, remaining seated and focused on all the reports that were past their due dates. He did manage to look up at Groty while scribbling, and they both flashed each other those fake, shit-eating grins that those who were a part of their clique had all developed.

"Lok'tar, Sergeant," Bralag addressed Groty from his seat. "He's restrained, just as you had asked for. I'm interested in seeing this so-called attitude adjustment plan of yours."

Bralag's voice seemed to pull Groty halfway back into reality, and his mind cleared up a bit from the fog that was almost visible in his peripheral vision. "Are da rest of da prisoners suited up and ready?" he asked. One thing Groty liked about the captain is that he was all business, with no desire for chit-chat, and he was never offended when Groty pulled conversations to the main point quickly. Less talking to real people meant less thinking about the real world.

"All seven of them are finishing up their turns in the latrine behind that leafless tree out front," the captain chortled, "but we'll wait for another ten minutes like you had asked. We put all the tools you requested in the chamber already." Bralag was far more respectful - at least face-to-face - toward Groty now, having seen the depths of the young man's depravity and his near total acceptance of anything and everything the Warsong Outriders asked him to do. He had never complained, criticized or even taken a vacation in his year there. By all measures, everyone had assumed that Groty loved his job.

With a spin of his stupid looking painted blue cape, Groty hovered out of the interview room as Bralag got right back to the reports he was signing. The doors back to the second anteroom and then the cell block hall were opened for him by an attentive grunt, but up the hall Groty was on his own. The cells were empty of all but piles of hay and wooden drinking cups and the walk down the stuffy hall felt like an eternity. He walked at an even pace, almost swearing that he could hear the wind blowing internally within the jailhouse as he approached the soundproof chamber door. He unfastened the latch with a click and swung the large metal door open, stepping inside and closing it with another stupid cape spin.

That familiar feeling of reluctance and foreboding washed over him as he gazed at the new prisoner tied down in the padded metal chair. Although he was wrapped in the same light brown prisoner's rags as the other captives, the noble night elf druid sat up straight and carried himself with a sense of self-respect even in such a dire situation as being the chamber. There was a slight scowl on his face but he was otherwise unperturbed, his proud antlers rising up from now messy, shoulder length hair. His chest-length, blue-black beard had some flecks of shiny silver and his cheeks and upper lip were shaven, leaving only the lower half of his face with hair on it. His skin was a light violet color and his glowing amber eyes displayed nothing but contempt for the miserable, misguided soul in front of him. His ankles and wrists were restrained with metal shackles, unlike the leather used for other victims. Although night elf men were not quite as large as jungle troll men like Groty, they were still not to be trifled with, especially an experienced druid.

In Groty's state, he would have been totally unprepared had the druid broken free and attacked him anyway. Removing his sunglasses at long last, his haggard, sullen eyes were revealed. There were bags and dark circles underneath and his lips appeared chapped without cause. He took his time, slinking over to his metal table where he removed the cape that should never have been sewn and layed it down with his shades, donning the reddish-brown apron that had been his companion for the past year. Pulling aside his light brown towel, he found everything he had asked for: a spice container, an empty glass, three bottles of liquid and a hacksaw. There were no writing instruments this time.

Opening the spice container, he filled the bottom of the empty glass with crushed nutmeg powder until he was sure it was sufficient to jump over his level of tolerance. He twisted the rubber cap off of the smallest bottle of liquid and soaked the nutmeg with too much absinthe. To take the edge off of the flavor, he cut the mixture with an extra strength concentrated mana potion. The colors swirled with the shaking of the glass.

Ignoring the druid entirely, he moved to the back of the room where a rickety wooden chair had been left for him and dragged it to the front with his free hand, seating himself in front of the druid. The elf seemed intent on a battle of wills, not realizing that he had already lost by considering it a battle. Groty sat so close that their knees were touching, and he leaned back as he sipped on his controlled substance until he had his fill. Once he was finished, he tossed the glass over on the metal table and took another look at the stoic elf. His stone face was unmoving, parhaps some sort of a defense mechanism. It was unnecessary; his fate had already been sealed.

Groty addressed the elf in Orcish first, assuming that he would understand whether he let on or not. "You really gon' try an' ride this one out, huh?" He tried to look sly, though looked more asinine than clever with his hairless eyebrow raised a bit too high. The will to work harder at convincing his victims he was serious had faded months ago. The elf did not move, but for whatever reason he chose to speak. He was only digging himself deeper.

"We've come to expect quite a bit from the Horde," he stated in Common. His voice sounded tired - not physically tired, but more like someone who had had enough. "But even for the likes of you, this-"

He motioned to the chamber itself with a roll of his eyes and slight nod of his head. "This is too far. It might be time for all of you who still have some sense of personhood left to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask why you're doing this."

Groty had to wait a bit before responding. He had developed a phobia of mirrors since he began this job, especially in the dark, because of...reasons. The feeling was gone in a second, but it had killed his mood for acting. There was no glory for the Horde in what he was doing. He couldn't even convince himself that he was just some sick bastard who enjoyed this. He didn't enjoy anything anymore, not even his new wife. All the strutting, preening and asinine smirks in the world wouldn't change that. The elf's moral shaming was more effective than all the insults the others hurled at him before eventually cracking during the past year. It broke through his skin...but it wasn't enough to save him from his choices. He knew himself and knew that he was too fargone.

Replying in Common, Groty got straight to the point. "Yer comrades, they ain' cooperatin' with us. They need a message sent. A strong one. We don' want any answers from ya, no secret information. You just a tool and nothin' more." The elf was completely still, listening but not reacting.

Groty folded his hands in his lap as he leaned back, his dead eyes and downcast face finally indicating some honesty behind his body language. "This current batch is in between. They just waitin' ta be exchanged or ransomed. We don' need nothin' special from them or you except hard work. You eat our food and sleep in our shelter, you do work and don' complain. But all they doin' is complainin'. So you gonna be our example. You gonna go out there and show yer youngers how ta obey orders."

Groty reached forward with one hand and tapped on the druid's long, proud antlers with a finger, leaning the elbow of his other arm onto his thigh. "Imma need those. Just ta make the point."

The elven druid's eyes grew wide with indignant outrage as his head moved back. "You have no right," he gasped, shaking his head. "This is a gift from Cenarius, a recognition of the work I - and others like me - have done in our efforts to preserve the natural order of life and protect the environment of Azeroth from anything that would threaten its balance. The natural order of one, connected life that _you_ are still a part of, an environment which _your_ people still have to share. You have _no_ right." It was futile, but his anger was overriding his wisdom.

Groty didn't like this any more than the druid did, but fighting fate was a losing battle. He hunched down to speak closer to the druid as though they were friends sharing a secret, looked the druid right in the eye, and said in crisp, near fluent Darnassian: "You just don't get it, do you?"

The elven druid was taken aback, his mouth dropping slightly open as he furrowed his brow.

"There is nothing you can ever say, and nothing you can ever do. This decision was made in your absence and it does not require your input. If you fight against fate, you *will* lose. But you have a choice. You can kick and scream as you resist the inevitable...or you can keep your dignity and simply accept what you can't control."

The noble druid looked at Groty for a moment and then looked down at his own lap. His choice was obvious.

Sliding his chair backwards as he rose, Groty slowly shuffled back over to the metal table and took the hacksaw in his free hand. His inner voice pleaded with him, long ago having lost the strength to scream and challenge him like before. He sucked down the last of his concoction from the glass, washing the voice and his subconscious down a storm drain in a rip tide that could not be resisted. The voice twirled and disappeared under the surface, drowned and dead. He was still trapped in this job he hated, performing these acts which he hated, being this person that he hated. But at least he could hate himself in silence, and allow the white noise to fill his ears until his waking hours became indistinguishable from his dreams.

Returning to the restrained elven druid, Groty stood by the side of the chair and took hold of the left antler with surprisingly little roughness. He lined up the blade about two inches from the man's skull, ensuring that enough of a knub would be visible that the others would know that this druid once had the proud, respectable antlers associated with those of the Cenarion Circle but had lost them. It was over in moments, and the right antler followed. Had it not been for the drugs pumping through his veins and kidneys, Groty might have found this unbearable. He knew from some of the tauren at camp how significant it was for the druids of the elves to sprout antlers, and knew that what he was doing was a crime against nature, an affront to the very world which sustained this life on Azeroth.

The druid didn't resist, didn't even look up. For all his years, it was this young, ignorant punk who seemed to have more insight regarding the reality of the situation. Groty lurched back to the table and hid the antlers and hacksaw from view with the towel, and then opened the door of the chamber to call in the doorman. Together, they unshackled the crestfallen elf and each took an arm, leading him up the cell block hall and toward the exit from the jailhouse. Just before they walked out the front door, the druid looked at Groty one last time, addressing him in Darnassian.

"May you one day feel all of the hurt you have inflicted on others."

His darkening amber gaze was peircing and intense. For a moment, Groty hesitated, locking on to the druid's eyes. He couldn't explain it, but there was a momentary lapse in his chemical stupor as the words washed the white noise out of his ears and wiggled their way into his brain. It was like a dam built only halfway across a river, not stopping the flow but certainly disrupting it.

* * *

Out in the recreational area, the seven prisoners had been lined up with their backs against the high wire fence - four Kaldorei women, one Kaldorei man and a human mage couple. Four grunts with axes on their belts and thick mahogany rods in their hands were prodding them into place as a few staff members from logistics and supplies sat, watched and joked from a wooden picnic table inside the rec area. A Darkspear axe thrower guarded the entrance, eyeballing all of the prisoners. The fence formed a sort of hexagon at the very edge of the camp, tucked into an alcove in the mountain side next to the jailhouse. The area was littered with confetti, paper cups and half-eaten food from a party the officers had thrown last night and a stinking rubbish bin had been brought over from next to the latrine. In and of itself, picking up trash with their bare hands was not that bad compared to the other tasks they could have been given.

It was the undignified treatment, however, that had driven the prisoners to finally try and pull a jailbreak three days ago. They only managed to make it out of their cells and barricade the door to the cell block hall with the metal table from the chamber for fifteen minutes before Groty and two grunts kicked the door down themselves. Although there were seven captives, they were so traumatized that they ended up returning to their cells willingly once they saw that the lightly armed orcs were accompanied by Groty himself. Their wills had been broken like the heavy wooden door, but the door only took a day to fix.

Before they had even realized it, their caped, shaded jailer and a fourth grunt had entered with another prisoner. Groty immediately seemed irritated.

"Why are dey standin' up," he barked in Orcish. "I told dem dey gonna pay for tryin' ta escape, and dat's how it's gonna be. Every one of ya, down on ya hands an' knees!" The grunts followed his cue, whacking at the prisoners with their booted feet and wooden rods until every inmate was crawling to pick up the trash with bare hands.

They had already seen, however. Every one of the prisoners - from the five night elves to the two humans - were in a state of utter shock and dismay. The elves, a people normally so calm and unemotional, all seemed on the verge of tears. The druid, the paramount of nobility and wisdom in Kalimdor, the ideal male in their civilization, had been defaced. Where there were once long, proud antlers, there were now two sawed-off knubs protruding from his head. It was the most vile, disgusting insult to everything the Kaldorei believed in, everything they held dear, a defaced symbol of all that was holy and pure and true. A few of them had been beaten by the grunts when they were first captured, and others had been dragged along the wooden floor of the block hall and thrown hard into their cell walls by Groty, but none of that compared to the visage which was now foisted upon them.

As Groty pulled the druid by an arm over to the semi-circle the rest of the prisoners had formed, he witnessed the hopelessness apparent in their defeated, frowning faces. The druid joined the other prisoners on his hands and knees, cleaning the area of waste by hand. One of the other prisoners, the only other male elf, attempted to crawl behind the druid out of respect, preferring the older man to lead in front as they carried out their unpleasant task. A grunt kicked his arm out from underneath him before he could get far, causing him to fall face-first in the dirt. "There ain' ta be no switchin' places. Finish ya work where ya be," Groty said, his lack of enthusiasm lost on everyone but himself. The prisoners were so dejected, the captors so elated; nobody noticed.

Yet he felt no victory or triumph, nor did he even feel the sympathy he usually felt for his victims. He felt nothing. Nothing at all. He had shellshocked himself so much with his own evil, his own depravity, that there was now nothing but numbness toward everything. Even the feeling of Zul'rea stroking his long earlobes with her finger as she hugged him from behind did nothing for him. The vibration over the top middle strip of his brain had become so strong that it felt like a river being artificially pumped through his skull.

The peons were all chuckling except for one idealistic teenager, but Groty could not partake in any joy, nor did he feel much despair. Aside from the realization that deep down inside he hated what he had become more than he had ever hated any member of the Alliance, he was completely hollow. Even his feeling of self-loathing was becoming less intense, and his sense of separateness and ego was weakening as he had difficulty distinguishing his own speech from the sound of other people speaking. As he watched the prisoners pick up trash and bear slurs from their captors, his vision went blurry as the drowsy feeling took over. Very soon, everything was black and another day was lost along with his lucidity.

* * *

He awoke some time during the night, though he didn't know which night it was. There were slivers of light seeping into the bedroom from under the door, just enough for him to see that Zul'rea was still sleeping, wedged between him and the wall. He tried to roll over and put his arms around her, looking for some sort of warmth, some sort of feeling even though he could no longer imagine what said feeling would be. Two months and he couldn't even remember how they met...an officer's party, maybe. Or was that after they got hitched? The days were meshing in to one another now.

Somewhere far away, in a low whisper that would have been inaudible even up close, he heard someone begging. Someone who had been beaten, broken, defeated. Someone who had lost all dignity and was not longer in denial of the wretched, ugly truth. Someone who could do nothing but beg for mercy and whimper quietly if it was denied.

_Please..._

Groty turned away from Zul'rea, keeping his back to her and the wall so he could face the rest of the room. He tried to prepare himself, to be ready in case anything came at him. What he wanted to be ready for, he did not know. He made sure to avoid glancing up at the mirror.

_Please...listen to me..._

The speaker sounded like someone who had just cried for a very long time and had exhausted themselves. Any sort of force or strength it may have had were gone. It was as though it was bound and forced to carry a great weight on its back, like a giant boulder, yet it still spoke.

_Go...you can still go...run away..._

"It be too late for me, now." Groty wasn't sure if he said it out loud or just thought it, but it sounded withered all the same. "I be done."

_No...please don't say that...it's never done...you always have a choice..._

Groty held his breath for a long time, denying his lungs any oxygen to the point where he almost passed out. There was no white noise now, no weightless feeling in his head, but no voice. He could hear his breathing, the breathing of this woman he barely even knew, and nothing more. It echoed for a long time, and finally he reached the point whereby sleep was indiscernable from consciousness.


	6. Exposed

_Six years ago._

The bailiff stared Groty down, growing nervous due to the shaven jungle troll's nervous leg-bouncing. The shackles around his wrists and ankles clanked and created an annoying sound. The bench they sat on was mahogany, and the wall it faced in the narrow hallway was decorated with what appeared to be certificates and diplomas. There were a few more halls leading off to the sides to the right of the bench, with the corridor ending in a T-junction. To their left were two large panels serving as the entrance to some important looking office. The hall was only about as wide as Groty was tall and it felt cramped.

"Stop doing that," the black-and-grey furred tauren barked at him. The bailiff had a long stick wrapped in leather and enchanted with shamanistic lightning. He had already used it a few times when moving Groty from cell to cell or cell to processing office. His arms were folded across his chest and he appeared to be bored out of his mind.

From outside the crimson colored walls, the commotion of the Orgrimmar streets below could be heard. It had been more than two months since Groty had been in processing, constantly moved about to everywhere except the court in the Valley of Honor. Public anger against the culprits behind the sullying of the Horde's good name made publicly transporting him, Nokar, Bralag, their commander from the camp, Lorkus, and about half a dozen randomly picked scapegoat grunts a dangerous ordeal. For his own safety, he had to be held in isolation after other prisoners threatened to hang all of them from the cell block ceiling with a noose made from bedsheets.

The double-doors with the gold name plate swung open before Groty could even catch Lorthiras' last name - he still didn't know after all this time - and his spectral secretary floated out. "Sir Lorthiras is ready for the client," it droned in a hollow double voice. Why did the Forsaken have to be so creepy?

As Groty tried to stand up, the bailiff kicked him in the shin with a hoof and whipped around, pulling out his stick. "Wait, maggot!" he shouted. Apologizing, Groty looked down and waited for the formal instructions to stand, turn and enter in front of the secretary and the bailiff. This guy was a professional, Groty had to admit.

Lorthiras' office wasn't particularly large - maybe only twenty feet long - but he somehow managed to cram an entire library in there, bookshelves lining every inch of wall space save a single corner. Boxes full of letters, missives and hundreds and hundres of Horde ID cards decorated the floor and created a sort of maze to the dull gold colored chair with cushions which matched the crimson hue of the walls. Lorthiras was seated behind his desk and scribbling away on a pad of some sort, his tall, stiff, V-shaped haircut matching the color of his grey suit. "Why don't you take a seat," he said without motioning to the chair or even looking up from his pad. "Ayer!"

A short, bald orc waddled over, his lower canine teeth bent outwards like the jaws of an ant. Lorthiras tore the sheet he was writing on from the pad and handed it to the orc with two hands. "Please make sure this gets to Barrister McAllister in the Valley of Honor within the hour. It's urgent." He took the orc by the wrists and closed both of his hands around the sheet, giving it a shake and giving the orc a nod as though it was some precious gift. Groty might have laughed if his dread and sobriety weren't weighing him down so much.

Lorthiras turned to his right, swiveling his chair around as his cologne wafted across his large rectangular desk. It was uncanny how a man who was technically a dead body could smell so nice. He motioned with two fingers, sweeping from the secretary to the wall and the apparition phased out of the room. He then turned to the bailiff.

"Officer, could you close the left panel of the door and leave the right panel open slightly? While I understand you must be able to see the accused at all times, what I am about to say is confidential."

The old tauren nodded at Lorthiras and turned to go out. He thumped Groty on the shoulder with the butt of his stick as he left. "I've got my eyes on you!" He closed half of the door like the undead had asked and sat down on the bench outside the door.

Lorthiras had the beginnings of a pointy mustache and goatee which never seemed to grow the three times Groty had met him during the past two months. His skin was a lighter grey than his suit with pink splotches, signs of his former skin color in life. His teeth were rotten, yet his breath never smelled. Despite his small stature and unassuming demeanor, his appearance was frightening to the troll.

"Garot'jin the Outcast, formerly of Darkspear Isle, then Sen'jin Village. Do you remember who I am?" Lorthiras had a voice like a normal sounding human as they conversed in Common - one detail Groty _did_ remember about him is that he preferred to use his former language - but there was almost no emotion at all. He was cold, calculating and always brilliantly logical.

"The...Outcast?" he asked with sad confusion. Groty was stuck on the way the undead had referred to him.

Lorthiras was unmoved by Groty's sensitivity. "Yes, indeed. I am Lorthiras, attorney at law, armchair psychologist, portal specialist. The Warsong Quartermaster assigned me to represent you and the seven grunts at your war crimes trial. It's come to a pleasant resolution, by the way. It's a shame you aren't allowed to attend your trial yourself."

A sliver of hope shone in Groty's eye. "Resolution? Ya mean...is it over?" He sounded burnt out and defeated, unable to express the quick, fleeting happiness that had just seeped into him.

Lorthiras had been resting both hands flatly on the surface of his desk, but raised his left palm to slow Groty down. "Not so fast; we need to have clear minds here. Let's recap." The lawyer pushed himself back and stood up, folding his arms behind his back and pacing back and forth as he shifted between looking at the floor or looking at the ceiling as he talked. "You, your direct superiors and a few underlings violated natural law as well as verbal agreements between representatives of the respective leadership of the two factions in Orgrimmar and Theramore Isle. For whatever unintelligent reason, you believed that you could expose the prisoners in your charge to physical and mental harm without any of your comrades reporting you and, more foolishly, you thought that your victims wouldn't tell their ENTIRE faction what had happened to them as soon as they were ransomed or exchanged. They did tell their ENTIRE faction, by the way. In fact, I'm surprised that this managed to continue for...I believe it was one year, eight months, two weeks and five days, give or take another five days."

Groty didn't slump down in his chair. He didn't hang his head in shame. He was beyond that now; it had been shoved in his face right where he could smell it too many times during the past thirtteen days. There was no more escape, now.

"During your tenure, you abused approximately ninety-three inmates, causing permanent physical damage or blemishes to thirty-two of them, mentally scarring eight who are now confined to the care of their families and permanently handicapping a corporal from the Knights of Stormwind. The speed by which the Warsong Outriders were capturing, processing and then releasing prisoners of war was uncanny - they outpaced every other subfaction while you were there." Lorthiras closed his eyes and inhaled for a moment, despite not needing to breathe. "Yes, it really was inevitable that you all would get caught. Even with the budget of the Outriders independent from the central government here in Orgrimar - what, with the Warchief's tacit _dis_approval of their lumber operation and all - it was impossible for the situation to continue the way it did without being noticed."

"I thought..." Groty trailed off for a moment, checking whether or not Lorthiras would allow him to speak. "I though that Thrall secretly supported the Outriders, and just didn' say it openly cause of politickin'."

"A naive view, Garot'jin," Lorthiras said as he punctuated his statement with an index finger toward the sky. "First of all, the Warchief spends little time during the week dealing with individual problems like this one. His great hall alone employs a few dozen underwriters studying various issues and preparing statements for release that he merely signs. Second of all, that the Horde does not officially endorse the activities of Warsong is public knowledge and unquestionable. We avoided the issue like the plague during the trial."

Yes, the trial. Being sober and having nothing to do all day helped him to finally focus his thoughts. "So...what are dey gonna do ta us?" Groty had finally stirred, leaning forward in his seat as he looked his lawyer over intently.

"Well, for the grunts it will be simple. They were merely accomplices and will suffer private dishonorable discharges and a denial of all financial benefits for veterans of the Horde. Most of them will simply drift on to other communities and find work in fields that facilitate anonymity such as inns, stables or other occupations related to the travel industry." The lawyer paused, perhaps wanting to give his client time to reflect. "Nokar, Bralag and Lorkus will be executed in public tomorrow."

His heart jumped into his throat. "Execut...oh God. Lorkus, too..."

Nodding, Lorthiras began speaking more quickly. The topic seemed to be fascinating him. "The Horde doesn't take issues such as torture lightly. The actions which you all took is a major moral blow to our efforts against the Alliance, which eventually translates into real, material damages. Jail time isn't enough for war criminals; the tribunal is demanding the death penalty, as is much of the general public."

Everything was being stated so matter-of-factly despite Groty's life hanging in the balance. It was another internal battle just to keep up with the discussion, and the muscles in his entire face were pulled tight as he struggled to process all the information flying his way. The most obvious question was looming now, and as much as he feared the answer, there was simply no escape from asking. "What about me?"

Lorthiras' eyes lit up. "See, Garot'jin, this is where it gets interesting, especially as it relates to you."

His eyes locked on to Lorthiras now, his pulse pounding so hard that he could feel it running through his jugular vein. Is this...is this the end?

"Nokar and Bralag blamed everything on you, and..."

That was too much for the jungle troll to hear. "What? _What?_ They - blamed me? AARGH!" He convulsed in his chair as the electric shock rocked his body, the leather padding on the inside of his shackles just barely protecting his skin from contact with a metal object. Lorthiras seemed to actually show some signs of caring about...well, something.

"Officer, that's quite unnecessary," he said pointedly. "I've never had issues with clients in the past, even when they express their views in passionate ways."

The bailiff had somehow managed to hoof his way over from the bench out in the hall to Groty's side the moment he heard a raised voice. He turned now, satisfied that he had made his point. They waited until they heard the right panel of the door close again before Lorthiras continued as though nothing had happened. Groty could only struggle to follow what his lawyer was saying as smoke wafted up from his skin.

"Anyway, Nokar and Bralag claimed that all of this was your idea and that you pressured them in to going along with it. If it weren't for the fact that their honesty has been tarnished by their money laundering and embezzlement of funds of a Horde affiliated entity, the accusation might have stuck."

Still trying to catch his breath, Groty asked the first question he could think of, his mouth trying to catch up to his brain. "What about Lorkus?"

"Lorkus refused to testify and refused to cooperate during cross examination. He seems to have accepted his fate." Lorthiras stopped pacing and turned to face Groty, hanging about six feet away from him. "Your own situation is a bit complicated."

Groty gulped, unable to speak. The silence only lasted a few seconds but was painfully long.

"You've contributed to a minor scandal here in north Kalimdor. But scandals come and go. The public latches on to them, sucks the life out of them and then forgets when the next one comes along. What they need is a sacrificial lamb, a way to make them feel like justice has been served until the next injustice occurs. In a few months only educated people in the capitol cities will remember, and in a few years nobody will even know the details of the great Warsong torture scandal after the Third War. In fact, I imagine that people on the east coast of Kalimdor will only switch to black market lumber from the Venture Company for a few months before buying Warsong again out of convenience."

Lorthiras took another pointless, unneeded breath before finishing. It was like dramatic theatre. "The people need their sacrificial lamb to feel vindicated. And that's why...Garot'jin must die."

Nausea was overpowering any anger he might have felt. "Why did I even pay you all dis money..." His head lurched forward as he fought off the coming blackout.

"It's quite alright, sir. I said that Garot'jin must die. I didn't say YOU must die."

Groty's heart rate decreased as he managed to control his muscles and fought the urge to relax his bladder right then and there. There was no white noise; only hideous silence. "Tell me what...what all dis shit means..." His voice was wavering.

Lorthiras beamed, showing what could almost be described as emotion. He hurried over to a corner and pulled a large chalkboard on wheels over in front of the troll. The lawyer pulled out a piece of chalk, and busied himself away with some diagram with lots of arrows, names and circles. The sound of the chalk against the board was oddly soothing and helped the troll to fight back the gas and acid reflux he could feel boiling beneath his chin.

"Connections and favors, dear sir. That's how the legal industry works. It doesn't matter whether you're in terrority of the Horde or the Alliance, it all functions the same way." He wasn't even looking at his client now, speaking as he continued his diagram, completely engrossed in his own explanation. "Plea bargains to shorten trials by getting violent criminals lesser sentences, prosecutors knowingly accusing innocent people to pad their conviciton records, throwing a trial due to old agreements with the opposing client's counsel, or even manipulating identity records for the purposes of covering up mishaps. Like we had in the Crossroads last week, fortunately for you."

Lorthiras stopped writing for a moment to look at his client. "It certainly is a grand time to be an attorney here on Azeroth!" he exclaimed as he gestured at his giant client with the chalk.

The troll's eyes were weary like a tired traveler who knew he had to press on, unable to rest. "Just tell me what's gonna happen." He had a sudden strong urge for a glass of water which he couldn't explain.

His lawyer turned back to the chalkboard and continued his diagram, waiting for half a minute before he continued speaking. "Eight days ago near the Crossroads, there was an incident when a group of highway robbers were being transferred to a prison flatbed for processing here in the capitol. Halfway between that city and the border with Durotar, the flatbed stopped at a dry brush for the night. A fire broke out due to a defective gas lantern. Several of the prisoners were injured beyond recognition and two died. They were career criminals, but they had not made it to trial and the gross negligence is a major blemish to the Horde. This at a time when a torture scandal has broken out."

The gears were grinding in the jungle troll's head. He could see where this was heading, but he leaned forward silently. He had to be sure. His lawyer needed to say it out loud.

"As you can imagine, the legal representatives for the prison transport authorties have begun calling in their favors, using their connections. Through our methods, I learned that one of the badly scarred prisoners had his portrait printed on a number of wanted posters. Aside from the different haircut and the heavier build, he's a near perfect physical match to you. It's quite amazing, to be honest."

The troll felt pangs of disgust with himself mixed with desperation. Whatever the afterlife was like, he knew it wouldn't be pleasant for people like him. "So, you gonna do someone a favor...by havin' another person executed in my place?"

"Correct."

"If I agree...den I be condemnin' somebody else ta die for my crimes." Selfishness, hope, guilt, acceptance, shame, relief...a cocktail of emotions boiled inside him, churning so fast that he started going numb again. It was easier to just shut down then cope with his conflicted heart.

The lawyer placed an index finger on his lip as he thought for a moment, and then pointed to the sky again. "Think of it this way. The decisions, from this point on, have very little to do with what you want. As your attorney for a trial which you cannot attend, I can force this through rather easily. It wouldn't be enabling or denialism for you to admit that, in this case, you really aren't totally responsible. My colleague asking me for this has...well, let's just say he put quite a bit on the table for this."

The feeling of cowardice and self-loathing had returned. He likely could fight this if he wanted to, but he knew himself. He wasn't strong. He wasn't brave. He wasn't a fighter. He was a runner, a survivor. His mind ran through a list of potential justifications for what was happening.

"So," the lawyer continued, "this is what will happen and what you must never tell to anybody else. The highway robber will be shipped in secret to Orgrimmar along with the failed transport officials in a few hours - they've been traveling for a week now. They will be dealt with separately. Tomorrow, the charred, nearly unrecognizeable robber will be executed along with Nokar, Bralag and Lorkus as Garot'jin, the secret torturer, the betrayer of the Horde, the scum of all of Azeroth."

The wording made the troll cringe. That wasn't the man who would be executed tomorrow. That was _him_. He wasn't getting what he deserved. He was escaping like a coward again.

Lorthiras motioned to the troll with an outstretched hand. "You, on the other hand, will be transferred to a black site - that means a prison which is not officially acknowledged - which holds those who aren't on death row, but are almost as bad. Rapists, arsonists, bank robbers, or people with really long records for assault and theft. It's hidden on the outskirts of Shadowprey Village in Desolace, where there are major plans for development of a port and heavy industry. You'll be doing hard labor the whole time, but you'll be fed well. It's a seven year sentence at which point you'll be free to go."

The troll was sitting up straight now, the sense of relief washing over him like a tsunami. So much didn't add up, though. "There don' be no prisons in Desolace," he said with a puzzled look.

"It's a secret." Lorthiras rapped his finger on the bridge of his own nose. "Just like this deal I've arranged with my colleague. You're to keep all of this to yourself. Both cases will be closed, a highway robber meets an end which isn't entirely undeserved, the general public is vindicated in their feeling that the torture accusations are an unfair generalization by the Alliance...you get to live. I get paid."

The troll's mind was starting to clear up now. His thinking was straightening out, and the guilt at leaving another criminal to die in his place was easily buried within Lorthiras' amoral justifications. But the clarity lead him to the elephant in the room.

"When can I see my kids?" The troll's eyes were big and wide as he asked.

The Forsaken stared back without saying anything at first. The tension was thick as the lawyer's refusal to answer at first filled the client with dread.

"You will NEVER see Garot'jin's children again. They have no connection to you now."

And there it was. The thumb in his eye. The blow to his head. The knife in his heart. Nausea returned to him in pangs, his head spinning as he tried to force himself to lose consciousness. It was all futile.

"I..." was all he managed to utter at first, his nostrils refusing to take in any air. "My son ain' even been born yet...one time. Just one time, after he's born," the troll whimpered.

The lawyer was unmoved, ignoring his client's wallowing entirely. "Obviously in order for this identity swap to work, you will need to cut all ties from your former life," Lorthiras stated as he ignored the troll having a nervous breakdown in front of him. He raised a hand to assure the bailiff in the hall that there was no need to intervene. "You'll need to take note of the robber's appearance. No more face paint for you, and grow your hair and beard out. Lose the peircings as well-"

"Just kill me," the troll groaned as he tried to control his twitching and regain some composure.

"I'm sorry, dear sir?"

There were no tears, but the haggard resolution in the troll's eyes was as pitiful as anything else. "Kill me."

"Sir, I'm trying to have a serious conversation-"

"Call the bailiff in. He can use the letter opener dere on ya desk." His eyes were steely and focused despite being wet. His body was still shaking slightly. "It'll be easy. One cut across my throat."

Lorthiras looked as his client calmly, though he did move the letter opener further away as a precaution. "Sir, the choice is beyond you at this point. Connections and favors. The system is bigger than you and me. Whether you want to or not, you're going to live. That is something you will have to accept very, very soon. Garot'jin's children will recieve the rest of the money in his account once I extract my fees and will be cared for. Whether you like it or not, they will be informed that their father was a war criminal who died a deserved death. The only difference now is that you'll either die tomorrow or die from old age. No matter what, you will not be a part of their lives, ever. It's time to let go."

His body paralyzed, all the troll seemed able to do was shake his head ineffectively as his lawyer continued explaining how his life had been destroyed through his own actions and was now out of his control.

"It's over, sir. No matter what you do, it's over. The ethnic leaders of the Warsong clan will release a statement this week condemning what you all did and the jailhouse at the Mor'shan Rampart will be torn down and converted into a pig stye. Garot'jin will be executed tomorrow, while the highway robber will serve out his sentence of hard labor, forever banned from entering the entire southern half of Durotar." Lorthiras moved behind his desk quickly, rummaging around through the drawers underneath. "I almost forgot about all this."

Although the troll's head was hanging down as he breathed through his mouth, he could see the intimidating stack of papers his lawyer set down on the desk with a thud. "We have some paperwork to push through before this can all be complete, we get you de-tusked and then ported to Desolace by this evening."

The information was too much, too fast. Despite having just had his heart ripped out of his chest, he had managed to hear the last part. "De...tusked?" His head slowly started to move up.

Lorthiras was still shuffling papers on his desk, not even paying attention to the troll. "Yes, of course, the same mark of shame that the highway robber was to receive." The matter seemed of no consequence to him.

The troll started shaking his head. "No no, dat's not fair. You already takin' so much away, now you gotta take what little self-respect I might have left?"

Another hint of emotion showed as Lorthiras stopped rummaging, slid the stack of papers to the side and folded his hands together with his fingers intertwined. He rested his elbows down on the surface of his desk and pursed what was left of his lips as he looked his client over. The Forsaken attorney looked frustrated. He didn't like this any more than his client did, but fighting fate was a losing battle. He leaned forward, looked the troll right in the eye, and said in acceptable, more-or-less conversant Zandali: "You just don't get it, do you?"

The tall troll was taken aback, his mouth dropping slightly open as he furrowed his hairless brow.

"There is nothing you can ever say, and nothing you can ever do. These decisions were made in your absence and they do not require your input. If you fight against fate, you *will* lose. But you have a choice. You can kick and scream as you resist the inevitable...or you can keep your dignity and simply accept what you can't control."

The irony was overwhelming. He didn't even have the chance to take it all in before Lorthiras switched back to Common. "Amazing what years fighting the Mossflayer forest trolls can help you to learn. That's probably the best accent I can muster. I hope that I have made the non-negotiable nature of this arrangement absolutely clear." His client didn't move, staring down at some imaginary space between his own feet.

Having organized all the various forms to be signed, Lorthiras clapped his hands together, pleased with himself. "Alright, this shouldn't take too long. Take the quill there and, if you wouldn't mind, write your signature as needed."

Without even moving his head up, the defeated, passive troll reached forward and took the quill in his trembling hand. He dipped it in the inkwell sloppily, sloshing some of the jet black substance on his fingers.

"To start with, I'll need your signature on this confession of all the crimes I mentioned previously, including mention of the ninety-three people you tortured."

"Ok."

"Now I need your signature on this testimony to the involvement of Nokar, Bralag and Lorkus in the prisoner torture scandal as well as their embezzlement of funds for their illegal gambling ring."

"Ok."

"Please initial pages three and five as well."

"Yeah..."

"This is a confession that you committed statutory rape by marrying Zul'rea, who was only fourteen years old at the time."

The troll paused for a moment. He had never loved Zul'rea - both of his failed marriages had been loveless - but she had seemed to look up to him, or at least to the position he held with Warsong.

"Fourteen? S-she told me she was sixteen!"

"That's still technically one year below the age of consent in Horde territory and you were twenty at the time, thus Garot'jin is still technically a predator."

"But she...well...ok."

"Good, now I need your signature on this release of all your belongings and funds - once I have extracted my fee - to Zulwatha for the purpose of raising your children."

"Done. She deserves it." There was finally a bit more life in his voice now.

"Next, I need you to sign a general apology to the Horde for failing them which will be nailed to the chest of the corpse to be presented as yours on the road outside the main gates of Orgrimmar."

"Ok."

"Please date that one as well."

"Ok."

"Here, this is a confession to the elders of Sen'jin Village that everything they have heard it true. It is coupled with a request that they disown you and strike your name from village records."

"Oh...I...ok."

"Sign here as well."

"Right."

"Initial page two."

"Ok."

"This is a dictated letter to your mother apologizing for your failure as a son and as a man."

He hesitated for a moment, and then signed when he heard the electrically enchanted stick crackling behind him. "Alright."

"This one is a public statement that you have not been mistreated while in custody and have received due process and all other rights owed to you."

It was ironic considering the fact that he couldn't even attend his own trial, but he signed that one in silence anyway.

"Sign page four but initial page two."

"Ok."

"Date page four as well."

"Well, why didn' ya just...ah, ok."

"Alright, now we need to switch things. The highway robber with whom you're swapping identities was illiterate, so I need you to just sign his documents with a big letter X. Here, this is a similar public statement that you have not been mistreated while in custody - except instead of the torture scandal guy, this is as some anonymous vagabond."

The troll hesitated for a moment, knowing that this was the last step. He put the quill down on the paper and signed an X, now taking on the identity of a petty criminal rather than a war criminal.

"Done."

"Sign page two but initial page...no, SIGN page two."

"Right, sorry."

"INITIAL page four."

"Ok."

"Date all the pages."

"Um..? Ok."

"I need your signature on this confession that you are guilty of robbing a Thunderbluff-bound caravan that was carrying school supplies for blind, starving orphans."

"What the...? Seriously? Oh...whatever."

"And I need your signature that you are guilty of robbing graves in the Camp Taurajo cemetary so you could re-sell their jewelry."

"Ok."

"Date the backside of the first page."

"Got it."

"No date it again, that handwriting was too skilled. The robber is supposed to be illiterate."

"Is that better?"

"Yes. Let's move on. Here's the big one. I need you to sign this confession that you were solely responsible for the prison wagon fire which injured yourself and several others, but through some miracle totally didn't kill anybody at all."

"Ok."

"And sign page two as well."

"Ok."

"And page three."

"Do you want me to just sign da whole thing?"

"No, no, only specific parts. Page four, please."

"Ok."

"Now page five."

"Ok."

"And page six."

"Dat's da whole thing!"

"It's alright officer, things are fine here. Alright, last document, an acknowledgement that the person drawn on this wanted poster is, indeed, you."

"Ok."

Lorthiras went silent for a moment, counting up all the pages. The troll laid the quill down on a peice of scratch paper so as to avoid marking the desk and finally crooked his neck up, allowing himself the opportunity to look at the impressive stack of documents he had just signed. This was it. There was no turning back. He was a coward who feared death, and he chose to live. Everything he once had was thrown away. He wasn't Groty anymore. He wasn't a father anymore. He wasn't a son anymore. He was nothing.

Lorthiras gave the troll an approving nod. "Splendid!" he said as he clapped his hands togethero ne more time. "All that's left now is for the bailiff here to lead you back to your isolation cell. My colleague will attend your de-tusking this evening - with his face concealed for security purposes - and I will be there shortly thereafter to provide you the portal to Shadowprey village. Expect your captors to be waiting for you immediately next to the portal. From that time your seven year sentence for highway robbery will have started, so just a few hours from now the clock will start ticking. Isn't it exciting?"

Before the troll could find a way to express his anger at his lawyer's smug ignorance, the bailiff had already taken him by the arm and begun leading him from the cushy chair to the double doors and out to the corridor. That was that. Lorthiras picked up a copy of the robber's ID, which had already reached Orgrimmar with the postal service, and looked it over.

"It's been a pleasure doing business with you, mister..." he trailed off as he held the ID a bit closer. "...Khujand. Please do contact my office again the next time you require legal services. Have a nice day!"

The bailiff led the rechristened troll out the door in a hurry, glad to finally be free of the responsibility of hanging out on a bench with nothing to read. The new man didn't even bother to look back at Lorthiras. His head hung low as he was led down the corridor, begging whatever was up above not to let him forget what his daughter's face looked like.


	7. Denial

A/N: This chapter depicts slavery, torture and a mild amount of gore. Please keep this in mind when deciding whether or not to read on.

_Just over five years ago._

The biting Desolace wind swept through the carved out mountain crevice, a light whistle tickling the ears of the still slumbering prisoners before dawn. One side of the narrow, oval-shaped crevice is walled off by the side of a mountain; the other by a ten-foot high ledge. The dark, cloudless sky formed a black blanket above, bathing the twenty reinforced thorium cages in darkess. Ten lining each side, twenty in total, though only seventeen inmates tonight. All of them sleeping, all of them waiting the start of another difficult, monotonous day.

The crevice may have begun as a natural feature of the side of the mountain, but it had clearly been excavated artificially to serve its purpose. The opening, which was ten feet wide, had perfect square sides that signified the work of a professional mason. The opening led to a winding mountain path with wooden steps embedded into the rock, though it twisted so much that only the curving mountain face through the opening and the sky above were visible to the prisoners. They were all from various races of the Horde, rather than members of the Alliance or neutral factions. This wasn't a public prison for normal criminals to be punished; this was where people were sent to be forgotten.

A thin, lanky jungle troll curled into the fetal position in the third cage from the left of the crevice's opening. His short mane and facial fuzz trembled as he shivered in the night cold, prisoner's rags and some wrapped fur boots serving as the only protection from the elements. While two of the other inmates had begun to stir, the scruffy troll along with the other fourteen inmates were all jolted awake by the sound of a Horde officer's whistle. Disturbed, all seventeen of them rose quickly and assumed 'the position': sitting up straight on the floors of their cages with their backs to the doors and their palms on the ground in front of them.

The nameless officer continued blowing the whistle as he entered the crevice flanked by a grunt and a headhunter as his backup. Once he reached the start of the cage rows, he let the whistle fall from his mouth and nodded to the grunt. Pulling a key from his belt, the grunt walked in a loop along the right row of cages first, coming back around to where he started on the left side as he unlocked each cage door without actually opening it. Once he had completed his task, the officer began barking out numbers without any sort of introduction or real instructions.

"Thirty-four! Thirty-six! Thirty-seven! Fourty-one!"

With each number, one of the inmates stood up slowly with his hands at his sized and exited the cage backwards, shutting the doors behind them. They would then move forward with their faces against their cages, not turning to face the officer. Once the process was done, both the grunt and the headhunter moved to the back end of the crevice and signaled to the officer that they were ready.

"Alright ladies, you know the drill! Fifteen minutes!"

Without a word more, the officer spun around and descended the twisting mountain path, the inmates all hurrying after him. They walked two-by-two, every one of them with their backs up straight - even the scruffy jungle troll with four-inch long knubs instead of proud tusks - as the grunt and headhunter aimed their weapons at the inmates' backs down the whole trail. Eventually the path wound around almost 180 degrees to another low crevice between a large, flat ledge on the mountain face below the cage crevice and the large jutting rocks that obfuscated the entire makeshift prison area from the view of the settlement proper. This crevice was wide enough to contain the latrines in the back and some logs in the front.

After fifteen minutes of waiting in line and washing up in wooden outhouses that doubled as both toilets and showers - all with the same drain - several grunts came by with large buckets of food. The meal was nicer than what many civilians in Kalimdor could afford - the one, single comfort during the prisoners' day. There were no utensils for safety reasons. The prisoners simply dug into the buckets with their hands and prayed that everyone had washed properly before touching the communal buckets. There were scrambled eggs (along with shell pieces), refried beans, fried oily dough, unpeeled whole potatoes and chunks of boiled fish which were supposedly deboned. Supposedly. The excess calories would be necessary for the day's work, and the inmates all ate quickly, silently and greedily. Four cups were passed out to and shared by the seventeen prisoners as they gulped down copious amounts of coffee and fresh water afterward. It was, without a doubt, the highlight of the day for many of them.

When the food and drink had been finished, the grunts that had been carrying the buckets left to inform the nameless officer, who was finishing up his smoke break. The prisoners remained squatting in the dirt obediently until the officer returned.

"On your feet! Line up, two-by-two!" His green face was already turning red, as though he enjoyed shouting simply for the sake of shouting. "March! Go!" He kicked the calf muscle of one of the inmates for no readily apparent reason as they walked on.

The winding path passed through another crevice with an artificial roof made from branches and coconut palm fronds. How palm trees could ever grow in this climate was beyond the inmates, but somehow the plants still thrived at the coastline. A rickety wooden door closed off the opening of this last crevice, and upon walking through the prisoners had entered Shadowprey Village from behind an isolated storage area. Working their way around the lonely buildings in the far north end, the chain of prisoners was now surrounded by six grunts, their weapons at their sides. Shadowprey was still a humble village at that point, perhaps not even a thousand permanent residents calling the place home. There were only two traveler's hostels, a single stablemaster, flightmaster and dockmaster and one lone blacksmith with two trainees in the corner jokingly called 'the Shadowprey special economic zone.' Only a few side streets led off from the main road, and the relatively quiet atmosphere gave the whole place a very village-y feel to it. One would never imagine, based solely on the appearance of its public area, that it was also a black site housing slave labor.

"Don't look any residents directly in the eye," lectured the grunt out in front as he had a hundred times every morning. "And smile if you see any travelers. DON'T say anything, or you taste the whip."

The seventeen inmates and six grunts - twenty-three people in total - marched in their mini-caravan out the brand new front gates of Shadowprey, all part of the elaborate show of the big plans for the settlement. Two large, plain wooden logs rose about twenity feet into the air to support a carved wooden arch fastened to the top of them with metal bolts. The singpost hung beneath, and the beginnings of ramparts north to the mountainside and south to capture more land for the settlement could be seen right next to the gates. Ditches had been dug further out in a line, demarcating where the wooden defensive walls would eventually be set up, engulfing a large swath of the coastal area to the south of the original village territory. A mixed-race group of four visitors passed the prison train on foot as the walked through the gates, leading their timber wolves by the reins as they passed by. They eyed the inmates curiously, and one of the grunts to the side took notice. "These are contract laborers for the expansion project," he beamed like a proper stage actor. "They are here to serve the Horde!"

The visitors smiled politely and waved before continuing on to one of the village's hostels. Every prisoner forced a fake smile, but none of them said a word. The prisoners were led on the main paved path out of town as they had been a hundred times before. They took the same dirt trail leading down an earthen embarkment off that main road as they had a hundred times before, and walked to the same half-cleared brush a few miles away for another twelve hours of hard labor as they had a hundred times before.

* * *

The peons were already to work on the trees with their axes as the prison train arrived, and without missing a beat the inmates were instructed by the grunts looming behind them to squat in the dirt beside a patch of rotting tree stumps. They observed as the peons took turns switching between long saws which required two workers to handle and the short chopping axes which allowed more precision. It wasn't long before a particularly large pine was felled with a crash and one of the grunts stepped forward. "Six fasteners! From you to you!" he shouted as he pointed first at a one-eyed, middle aged orc and then to a blue haired, tusked troll. "Now, you egg-sucking gutter trash!"

Two tauren, the troll, the one-eyed orc and two more uninjured ones ran like gophers to several piles of thick, weathered looking rope and hurried back over to the felled tree. Like clockwork, they fastened two ropes to each side of the tree at the front, back and middle. They turned to the same grunt for approval and quickly squatted back down in the dirt again when they received a nod.

"Six pullers," the grunt barked as he pointed at the tuskless, overly tall troll. "From you down to you!" The grunts finger ended down at an abnormally large, patchwork Forsaken. Without question, they hurried to the waiting ropes and slung them over their shoulders. A grunt and a peon moved out in front to direct them, and the six prisoners began dragging the pine, which must have weighed at least three tons, through the dirt patch in the direction of the dirt path.

The work was backbreaking. As long as they could keep a steady pace it was manageable, though when they had to move the tree from a ditch up the earthen embankment leading to the paved road to Shadowprey, they struggled for a few minutes. Once back on the road, they marched over the smooth, flat stones of its pavement in silence, the grunt and peon chatting with each other every few minutes.

"Oh, Loa..."

The grunt looked back over his shoulder and made eye contact with the large troll, if only for a second. The prisoner's heart sank as he realized he had spoken out loud on the job.

* * *

After a grueling three-hour hike back to town, the prisoners had finally hauled the tree through the front gates of Shadowprey Village and across the vast, empty expanse between the rest of the settlement and the lumber mill on the empty coastal plain to the south. Mechanical saws blared as lumber was sliced and fitten, and a trail of smoke wafted up from the chimney on the roof of the second floor. More civilians were at work inside, cutting, measuring and packing wood of various shapes and sizes. The foreman - a jolly orc man with his hair in two braids - noticed the laborers hauling a tree and waved them over to the ramp leading up to the mill's foyer.

"Yes, right up here," the foreman said as he used his clipboard to motion to the exact spot he needed the tree to be.

The prisoners managed to pull the tree into place and had already started back to the half-cleared brush when the officer's voice was heard.

"Khujand, over here," he said as he motioned with his rolled up bull whip for the jungle troll to follow him behind a random, seemingly pointless defensive wall made of several large logs tied together. It wasn't connected to any part of the city and was isolated even from the mill, having been built even further south than the end of the ditch that would one day hold the town wall. The grunt and the peon continued leading the five other inmates back to work, not one member of the group making eye contact or even slowing down. This was par the course for talkers, and everybody forgot sometimes.

Before the troll could even start to follow, the officer had disappeared behind the wall. Keeping the officer waiting wasn't a good idea and the prisoner hurried after him. Further behind it was sand and small patches of grass, plains and jutting rocks and the wilderness. It was isolated though there was no one for the sound to be carried over to.

The troll sighed deeply and took his time trotting behind the wall with his head hung low as he stared at the ground in front of him. This wasn't the first time, nor would it be the last, but he dug deep to find what he needed to make it as difficult for them as possible. As he turned around the wall, he could see the familiar tall, thin pine trees behind it and the dirt patch they concealed. When he had reached the large, flat, slanted rock he had become so familiar with, the six prison guards wielding heavy mahogany rods wrapped in leather that were accompanying the officer formed a circle around the prisoner.

"You've been told about the rules, Khujand," the officer said sternly but without shouting. As always, his red and black chestpiece gleamed in the sunlight despite the fact that the village had never been invaded and that the steel must have been uncomfortable. The skin on his shaven scalp wrinkled as the muscles in his head flexed from his consternation. "You can use the latrine thrice a day, you get the food and shelter you need, but there is to be NO talking. What we've got here is failure to-"

Screw it, he thought. There's nothing he can do to get out of this; might as well go out with a bang. In a flash, Khujand picked the only tauren among the guards and sucker punched him in the eye as quickly as possible. The guard fell right back with a cry and landed on his behind, rubbing his eye as he scooted behind his comrades. Khujand's punishment was guaranteed anyway.

The officer stood back with his fists on his hips, his rolled up bull whip in one hand as the five other guards lunged, swinging at any limb or appendage they could hit without getting too close. As badly as they had beaten Khujand before, they were wary of letting him grab ahold of them.

"Don't let him grab it, don't let him grab-"

There was shouting as the troll snatched the rod from one of the grunts but fumbled, and the weapon was lost underneath the shuffling feet as more blows rained down on his forearms, shoulders, back and neck. He was knocked to the ground with a particularly heavy hit to his kidneys, forcing him to crawl as he grabbed for the guards' ankles and testicles, bruises already appearing on his arms as the entire group became winded. At one point, he was struck on his hairless left eyebrow and the skin was split open, blood seeping down into his eye. One of the guards managed to jump on Khujand's back and snake his weapon around the troll's throat, choking him while each one of the others grabbed ahold of the prisoner's limbs and the last guided his body onto the slanted rock. It was like trying to wrestle down a kodo, and all seven of them - the jailers and the jailed - knew that every muscle in their bodies would be tight and sore in the morning, possibly with some tears.

"Wrap it up, fellas. He's one man, he's just delaying the inevitable." The observant officer's tone and volume didn't change even as the sweat dripped down his brow.

The two guards that had been on Khujand's back quickly shifted to holding his shoulders. The two grunts holding his arms folded them at the elbow to restrict his grabbing power, while the two holding his legs folded them at the knee to prevent him from standing or kicking; all four of them sat down on his limbs, expending all they had to restrain the prisoner. They all crouched and stood as far back from his body as possible when the officer positioned himself to Khujand's left side and pulled the troll's shirt up to his neckline. The whip was unfurled with a menacing crack, its wielder reaching all the way back as he prepared his first lash.

"It's been almost a year here, Khujand. You should be beyond this by now." The officer was clearly annoyed, but not deterred by the troll's defiance.

Before Khujand had a chance to launch into another vulgar tirade, the officer pulled back his whip with a crack and sent it down into the flesh of the troll's back, leaving a deep cut that drew blood from the very first lash. Searing pain that couldn't even be compared to a razor gnawed at every nerve ending in the skin as he involuntarily arched his back and sucked air between his teeth, the guards struggling to keep him pinned down. The dark red liquid seeped down Khujand's back, resembling the color of his vibrant scarlet mane yet clashing with his light azure hide as it spilled out. Years of the same repetitive motion had rendered the officer an expert on how to make it hurt. The fact that this prisoner in particular refused to scream despite the searing pain frustrated the officer to no end.

"Ask ya moocow how his black eye be feelin," Khujand rasped defiantly.

The tauren was unshaken. "It feels a lot better than your back does right now!" The guards erupted with laughter as the second and third lashes came down in quick succession, the prisoner twitching and breathing through his teeth each time. The third was almost embedded in the troll's tough hide, and the officer had to pinch the end and peel it out of the skin. Khujand had slowed down his struggling now as the realization that there was nothing that could stop this, much to the relief of the now exhausted guards. The officer reached back again for even more lashes, feeling the need to make his point absolutely clear.

"You WILL understand, scum! Consider this an attitude adjustment plan!"

* * *

The inmates milled about as they were served dinner on the large, flat ledge on the mountain face below the cage crevice overlooking the ocean. Those last two hours before lights out were theirs, one of the few things they could savor during the day. They were allowed to socialize quietly - the keyword being 'quietly' - as they were finally allowed to speak. Some of them played tic-tac-toe in the dirt with twigs while others played a pebble balancing game. The record for the highest stack was four.

The tuskless, shirtless jungle troll limped up from his meal and hobbled over to the far end of the ledge, where he could sit alone and see the ocean. He was fairly sure that the ouside toe on his right foot was broken though the cut over his right eyebrow had stopped stinging and became merely a dull ache. Five large gashes lined his back from top to bottom, some of them intersecting each other. The pain was excruciating, though his regeneration ability had already caused the bleeding to stop. The blood had seeped down into the seat of his pants and turned a darker hue of brown than the fabric, though the cuts themselves were already starting to heal. He had been forced to skip lunch that day and the leftover rice, black beans, expired apple slices and fish heads actually seemed almost appealing.

With one hour left before lights out, Khujand sat on the edge of the ledge with his feet dangling off below. It was a forty foot drop to the jagged rocks down below, and they looked like a piece of art as the waves crashed upon them. The ocean was wide and open with an orange hue near the horizon. The red sun was finally descending and the scene was nothing short of breaktaking, wiping the pain on his back from memory. This was _his_ time. His time to be alone with his thoughts, and the occasional, perhaps twice a year visit from his good side, his moral compass, the voice deep down inside him. Tonight was not one of those nights. He only had his conscious self to fill his head.

As the sun's brightness had lowered to the point where he could watch it set, it was his last hour to reflect over what he had done. It was all he could do to avoid descending even deeper into his madness, his titanic sense of guilt and shame crushing every bone in his body. He had spent the first year intentionally not thinking about his crimes against humanity (elfanity? dwarfanity?), only focusing on his surroundings. He could only count the number of bars on each cage and the number tears in the clothing of his fellow prisoners so many times before he even ran out of things to observe and think about. The monotony and isolation with his own thoughts were far more difficult than any of the whippings, labor accidents or prison fights he had been through.

He wondered how much the people he had jailed himself hated him. It was a given that they would; in their situation, they would need to focus their anger on something. At no point did he ever pity those he killed in battle down in Warsong Gulch. Those were soldiers on the field, and they knew what they were in for. But the real victims - the ones who had surrendered or been captured, the ones whom he was supposed to take care of - were those who haunted him every single night. Had his nightmares been flipped with his victims torturing him instead, it would have been a form of consolation - a way to convince himself that he was somehow atoning for sins for which there was no atonement. But no. His blood curdling nightmares, pushing him beyond the point of absolute terror every single night, were always true to his vile nature. His victims were never given a moment's respite, never granted the right to strike back...and that made it so much worse. He hated it, hated himself, for having violated other living beings with impunity. Even with all the trials of being used as slave labor in an unacknowledged prison didn't feel like atonement for him; he was only in prison because of what he did. His own victims...it almost felt pointless to replay it in his head again and again, yet it was his routine every single night.

But he tried so hard to convince himself of the fantasy that their anger was misplaced, that he was tricked, that it wasn't his fault. No matter how little he believed that, he wanted it to feel true to him so much, just to get rid of the screams that haunted his sleep every single night - screams that he caused.

Nokar, Bralag and Lorkus had truly been sent to the gallows. Tt was the former two who had pumped him up, made him believe his own hype, made him justify what he was doing. No, what they were doing. Yeah. They were responsible to because they *made* him do it. If he hadn't met them, he never would have chosen - been pushed into doing what he did. Or they did. Together.

"Exactly..." he mumbled out loud, no longer caring about appearing to be a crazy person talking to himself. He forced a fake smile as he fought back the waterworks, choking on the lie in his throat.

Since his fall, the Horde and the Alliance had started putting some rules of combat into writing to avoid any more scandals. A prisoner had the right to food and water, the right to quarter and shelter as long as they obeyed their captors and cooperated with direct orders, and physical harm wasn't necessary to discipline someone already in chains. Maybe...maybe those changes were even _because_ of what he did!

The nausea turned over in his stomach in rejection of the embarrassingly hyperbolic sham he was trying to convince himself of. He wanted to much to be forgiven, to be understood. Couldn't _they_ sympathize with _his_ position? Surely if those whom he hurt knew that he understood that, they wouldn't hate him so much. If he could only find a way to reach out to them, to explain that it was all Nokar and Bralag's fault, that he truly felt bad and was sorry for what he did...perhaps they would understand his situation too.

Yes, his situation! He was just a man trying to support his family. Was that so wrong? He was tricked by promises of taking care of his kids. It really wasn't his fault at all.

"Not my fault..." he lied as he stared blankly into the setting sun dropping into the ocean.

And if they knew that...they would forgive him. They had to! It made so much sense. If they did hate him, it was really more of a misunderstanding than anything. He didn't really want to cause a defenseless prisoner harm, honest. In fact...he was a victim too! Just like them! He wrapped up all the immature selfishness he could and forced himself to swallow it like a psychotropic treat. He forced himself, in spite of his intuition and its malicious facts and logic, to believe that he wasn't the depraved, cowardly, worthless, downright evil piece of trash that had done such things. He dove wholeheartedly into self delusion, running away from the truth of what he had chosen to do, escaping the inevitable conclusion for just one more day.

"Not my fault..."

The sun was set now and he would only have fifteen minutes or so before lights out. None of the inmates stirred, though, savoring every last second they could have outside of the veritable tomb cut into the mountainside. Scattered groups of them were trying to polish pebbles into cubes to use as dice, tucking them into their shoes for safe keeping. It was the only way to avoid something dear being stolen. Rising from his ledge, the tall, lean troll stretched the tight muscles in his forearms and calves, all burning with a pain from literally lifting trees all day similar to the pain in the gashes on his back. He stood for a moment, taking one last look at the final slivers of red disappeared below the horizon.

As the whistle blew and the prisoners filed back into their cages, Khujand wore his fake smile with false pride, pretending to marvel at the feigned effectiveness of his escapist fantasies. Deep down he knew who he really was. As the door to his cage was locked, the tuskless troll curled into a ball again, bracing himself for the cacophony of abused, tortured souls that would stay with him until the next morning. He held is breath for a few moments and was finally able to release, crying himself to sleep.


	8. Acceptance

Warning: descriptions of violence, injury, torture as well as attemtped suicide. The character is developed a bit further in this chapter, but if the above topics are sensitive for you then you may want to skip.

_Two years ago._

Twenty cages still lined the two sides of the crevice cut into the mountainside by Shadowprey Township. Twenty inmates slumbered inside under the night sky, the black site prison now full to capacity. The stars were still visible overhead even as the sun had began to rise, one of the few comforts the inmates could enjoy. Quaint to those on the outside, but to be able to ignore the dull grey rock of the mountainside and gaze up at the stars every single night and early morning was a pleasure which the forgotten and shunned never took for granted.

A thick, beefy jungle troll curled into the fetal position in the third cage from the left of the crevice's opening. His long mane and beard layed still as he slumbered comfortably in the night cold, ragged prisoner's shorts and some wrapped fur boots serving as the only protection from the elements. Most of the inmates appeared unprepared for the sound of a Horde officer's whistle. Disturbed, nineteen of them rose with a jolt and assumed 'the position.' One had already anticipated the start of the day, his smooth, unblemished back facing the cage door as he fingered one of his sawed-off knubs that was once a long tusk.

The routine was the same. The officer was flanked by two attendantes, barked out numbers and led the inmates out of the tomb that was their home. Composed of various Horde races, they all looked haggard and broken, obeying the instructions shouted at them without hesitation.

The inmates are marched down the winding mountain path to the latrine area and given their quick reprieve, and then their hearty breakfast - still more calories than what most free civilians ate - while sitting in the dirt and waiting for instructions. They were soon marched through the final crevice, around the storage area and toward the town gates, their six handlers keeping them away from any local townies and reminding them to smile at visitors via quick jabs with the hilts of their weapons.

Shadowprey Township could now boast over five thousand residents, the older buildings having been demolished in favor of three-storey apartment buildings that could house more townies. A new set of docks had recently been constructed, and more piers under construction signalled the coming of a real port. Goblin ships could finally be seen as even Alliance cities such as Feathermoon Stronghold exploited neutral cargo carriers to skirt the generally understood ban on inter-factional trade. Porters loaded and unloaded cargo while laborers carried various goods back into the township, trading them to retailers running their shops up and down the main road which now spanned all the way to the lumber mill.

As the prison train passed underneath the township gates, the paved main road and vast plans were no longer concealed by the completed defensive walls contructed of twenty-foot high wooden logs bolted together at the sides. Six tauren herbalists passed the twenty-six man prison train as they led their kodo to the township gates. The animal was heavy with as many herbs and edible vegetables as it could carry, and the herbalists greeted the prison train warmly as they walked by. The dazed troll hadn't noticed as he stared off into space, though there was a chance the visitors might have noticed him and his lack of enthusiasm - he was the tallest and the second widest of all the inmates and was difficult to miss. He flinched as one of the grunts whacked him in the hamstring with a mahogany stick and automatically waved to nothing in particular, the defiance he had once shown to disciplinary acts having been beaten out of him long ago, as it had been beaten out of all the inmates.

Marching off the main road, the prison train followed the familiar trail to the now dwindling, logged out brush that was quickly becoming a small grove with only a handful of trees. The soil had begun to turn green with grass sprouting up, the mutated results of some worldwide catastrophe or crisis or something of the sort which the inmates had overheard the townies talking about during the few brief moments when they passed through town. The inmates squatted in the dirt as they waited for the peons to finish their chopping, grunts and headhunters with their weapons at the ready. It wasn't long before the first tree was felled and six fasteners were called to tie the six ropes to it, a grunt screaming in their ears the whole time.

Four inmates took hold of the ageing, well-worn ropes at the back and middle of the tree - two to a side. As the tuskless troll squatted unaware, one of the grunts whacked him on his meaty chest with one of the sticks to grab his attention, causing him to quickly rise to his feet without question.

"Up at the front, maggot," the grunt snarled up at him, staring him down as he hurried to grab both of the two unused ropes at the top of the tree. Without even slinging the ropes over his broad shoulders, he lurched forward and dragged most of the tree's weight with him using nothing but grip and forearm strength. The other four inmates helped to aim and steer the tree as the inmates all followed one grunt and one peon down into a ditch near the main road. Still doing most of the work, the troll merely shrugged his shoulders and yanked a bit to pull the tree up the embankment and onto the pavement.

The five inmates passed underneath the township gates going the opposite direction from the morning, waiting patiently as bypassers and hawkers slowly ambled out of their path. They hung a left at the first major intersection, moving along the newest part of the town's main road. All along both sides were industrial buildings - furniture carvers, a tissue factory, all different varieties of woodworkers, nail and bolt manufacturers and lots and lots of weavers - going about their daily business. Nobody paid any mind to the supposed "contract workers" hauling in more wood for the lumber mill; just another group of manual laborers dissappearing into the town's growing crowds.

The lumber mill that was their destination had fewer employees, the need for new construction projects in the area waning. Even after twelve minutes of carrying the massive tree's weight along the road back to Shadowprey, there was minimal definition visible in Khujand's thick muscles, no bulging veins or beads of sweat to suggest any physical strain. At some point between the ditch on the side of the road and the lumber mill, his mind had drifted off and he stood in front of the entrance of the mill with his eyes focused on an oddly shaped rock, looking more like a hollow undead than living laborer.

Their work was finished after only seven hours that day, and after regrouping at the lumber mill following the last haul the new officer in charge of the inmates assigned them to various menial tasks in both public and private facilities. For the government buildings, it was the only means of keeping the spaces tidy and for the private establishments it was an efficient way to keep the locals happy with how the rapidly expanding port city once referred to as a village was being managed. Looking over his clipboard, the squat orcish officer called out a few names before hesitating for a moment and calling out "Khujand." Responding to a name that wasn't his, the jungle troll trotted over to the officer with his hands out to show he had no weapons.

"You four, to the pigs sties," the officer said sternly but without shouting. There were no details beyond that; the prisoners were free labor and nothing more. Knowing why they were being sent to any place in particular was none of their business.

The walk to the sties next to the stables was a quick one, and the heat from the animals as well as the earthen floor was a welcome change from the Desolace cold. Upon reaching the pen itself, the inmates saw the reason why they were brought there. As had been the case many times before, there had been a greased pig chase the previous night and the pen was now littered with confetti, paper cups and half-eaten food - in addition to the expected gunk and grime. The two grunts that were accompanying the prisoners laughed as three of them - two young-ish orcs and even the patchwork Forsaken - cringed and stepped back from the sight and stench in front of them. Without warning, one of the orcs and the clueless, tuskless troll were shoved hard into the metal railing lining the pen, both of them almost sliding to the dusty floor. It was all a big joke to their captors.

"Well, go on!" cackled the grunt with crossed eyes. "You heard what the officer said. Earn your keep!"

While his three brothers-in-chains squirmed, the jungle troll simply removed his wrapped fur shoes, hiked his tattered shorts up above his knees and stepped over the railing without even needing to climb as he waded ankle deep in mud, garbage and pig shit. Without any insubordination or a hint of resistance, he began diligently picking up the paper waste and half eaten food from the muddy stye.

"Well," piped up one of the two orcish prisoners, "since he's working so hard, can we just hold the rubbish bin - owwieeeee!"

The squeamish prisoner fell to the ground and clutched the pit of his knee where one of the grunts had just whacked him with a mahogany stick. The second orcish prisoner merely froze, unsure of what to do until the stick made a thud as it connected with his chest. Reeling, he collapsed against the railing as he struggled to breathe. Before the two grunts could even turn to the Forsaken prisoner, the patchwork man had already scaled the railing and started collecting garbage by hand along with the troll.

The workday was difficult but went by mercifully fast, and before they knew it the prisoners had been rounded back up and marched to the medium sized flat ledge on top of the cliff overlooking the ocean, hidden from the view of shadowprey by a wall of trees lining the north edge of the settlement's cliffs. The four who had been cleaning the pig stye entered the latrines again, which functioned not only as old style squat toilets but also the showers, both with only one drain.

Wet but smelling slightly less awful, Khujand ignored his socializing cellmates after dinner as he always did and lurched across the ledge at a snail's pace to sit on the edge with his legs dangling down the side of the cliff, overlooking the jagged rocks below and the waves crashing on them. The descending sun was beyond gorgeous, though its beauty was nearly lost on the tired jungle troll as his brain struggled to produce conscious thought rather than shutting down into a near catatonic state.

Four years was not a particularly long time in prison, but the long working days, lack of weekends and two evening hours with nothing to do but reflect on his crimes had worn on him. This was free time, though it wasn't necessarily his time. The lack of meaningful interaction with other people left the boundaries between his conscious and those around him blurry as his sense of individuality and personhood slipped away. He was existing rather than living. It had been five months since the last time he spoke, and during periods like that his voice box would often fail the first few times he finally did try to speak again. Whether it was due to disuse of his vocal cords, or a psychological issue like how his tusks wouldn't grow back, was beyond him.

"Hmmmmmmm..." he hummed, feeling the vibration in his vocal chords to test whether or not a sound would come out.

As he sat far too precariously on the edge of the ledge, he stretched out his wide, muscular back after a hard day's work, the slouch typical of the Darkspear tribe having become only a rare, once-in-a-while habit now; it wasn't practical to hunch over while lifting heavy objects. The hide all across his back, arms and legs was completely smooth - not a blemish on it as opposed to his fellow inmates. Through a weird trick of genetics, Khujand's regeneration was hyperactive even for a troll and it seemed that no matter how grievous the injury, no matter how bad the accident, his body would never scar.

Gone were the thousands of scrapes and bruises that were standard procedure for manual laborers.

Gone were the pock marks on the rear of his shoulders from the times he had literally been stabbed in the back by other inmates over disputed games of dice and tic-tac-toe.

Gone were the dents and calice on his knuckles from revenge attacks where he had nearly killed the above mentioned backstabbers or when simply had to teach another inmate a lesson.

Gone were the long, protruding lines which once marked all the lashes from the bull whip he had received from the prison officer for his out of control behavior during the first few years.

Gone were the bone shards and residual aches from the avalanche of lumber that had shattered his collarbone and right shoulder and killed the half-tauren, half-taunka inmate who was the closest thing Khujand ever had to a friend while in prison.

And gone was the long, deep cut that had once led a trail all along his left wrist from palm to forearm.

He had smuggled a broken shard of glass into his cage that particular day, ensuring that he cut deeply, carefully and at the beginning of the night such that he could bleed out before anyone saw the red pool. Khujand's hide was thick and leathery and he was not vascular like most Darkspear; it had not been easy to hit a vein. Even if his victim's would never know, he had thought in that moment of weakness at rock bottom that they deserved it, deserved to have their tormenter dead, forgotten and unmourned in a cage on a cliff.

That failure in particular had made him feel helpless. Due to his freak-of-nature genetics, he merely passed out from blood loss thinking he had finally ended it all only to wake up in the morning to a mostly healed wrist, the veins having simply repaired themselves while he was unconscious. Even the unsightly scar had been healed away by his regeneration within a few months, leaving the hide on his left wrist and forearm just as tough and durable as the hide on his right.

Upon finding the shard of glass and pool of blood, the guards sat him naked in an outhouse with a modern sit-down toilet and chained his ankles and elbows to the septic tank such that if he snapped through the thorium shackles - as they knew he was strong enough to do - he would flood his living tomb with the tank's contents. For the next week, they passed him food and water through a slot, allowing him only to eat, drink, sleep and relieve himself in "the hole." They had seen that he was too incompetent to even kill himself properly, and could use the threat of isolation and immobility to dissuade their best worker from trying again. He had no power over anything in his life at all, not even the power to end it. The regeneration ability that had been such a boon on the battlefield was now a curse as he wallowed in his misery, nature's blessing mocking him to no end.

Perhaps there was one more thing he could do. For the first time in his years sitting on that ledge, Khujand glanced down at the jagged rocks below him, the waves crashing upon them like a perfect piece of art. The drop down below was at least fourty feet, and if he angled himself just right he could ensure that he would hit the rocks head first. It would take only a second and then...it would all be over. The nightmares of his victims screaming would be over, the reminders of the atrocities which he committed would be over. He feared the existence of a special hell for people like him, but if he would inevitably go there then fighting against fate seemed like a waste of time.

"Hmmmmm..." he hummed as he tested his vocal chords again for no real reason, not even realizing that he was doing it.

He scooted his butt just a little bit further off the ledge. It would be so easy. All the hard manual labor had caused him to gain so much weight. He was already taller than all the other inmates, and the repetitive lifting of entire trees had left him looking less like a lean, vascular jungle troll of the Darkspear and more like a brawny, brutish forest troll of the Amani. His size would add extra force to the fall, and his body may break apart into several pieces of shark food, ensuring that he could never be stitched back together to regenerate. Even now, he could feel the pressure his bottom exerted on the ledge, perhaps even causing it to crack.

The jagged rocks weren't waiting down below. They sat as they always did, indifferent to whether or not he finally took the plunge. It was his affair and his alone.

Khujand scooted a little further off, most of his thighs hanging in the open air.

Was it the right thing to do?

He wondered if he deserved to lose what little life he had remaining, deprived of the right to his protein-rich meals and the chance to watch the sun set every single day. Yet he also wondered if the torment he relived in his nightmares every single night was more befitting, and ending his life prematurely was a cop out from more deserved punishment.

Flinging himself from the ledge was one decision he could make of his own free will.

Would he be a coward for doing it, and escaping his nightmares?

Would he be a coward for not doing it, and staving off his punishment in the next life for another day?

And then...something strange happened. Something he would not have expected in a thousand years.

It was something so bizarre, so surprising, that any white noise or waking nightmares, any officer's whistle, would have been tuned out.

It was a sound so beautiful, so sweet, that despite having been whipped into submission and acceptance of his fate long ago, his lip still quivered at the sound.

_Wait..._

His heart stood still for a moment and his eyes widened in disbelief. For the longest time, it was as though time had stopped and he swore that the sun hung in one spot without descending any further.

A very long, comfortable unit of time lingered, washing over him in a way he would not have been eloquent enough to describe.

_You're not done yet._

Khujand exhaled and started breathing again. The sun was released from its hold and began sinking below the ocean as it had before, painting the entire horizon with a view so exquisite that to focus on anything else almost felt pointless.

"I missed you so much..." he whimpered.

A second wind filled the tired, burned out prisoner's lungs as he braced himself on the ground with his palms and scooted far back onto the ledge, leaving only his feet to dangle off again as he leaned back.

He shoved the selfish thoughts of whether *he* wanted to live or die out of his head. Selfish. That was the correct term. He had no right to even think about what was right or wrong for him. Because it wasn't about him.

It was something he had only now - in that moment, in that eternity stretched into a single second - begun to realize. None of it was about him. He didn't matter. It was about his victims.

There was no sympathy for those he killed in combat down in Warsong Gulch. They signed up for war. But the ones who had surrendered, or been captured alive and were obedient, the ones he had hurt once they were taken back to his jail in the Mor'shan Rampart...it was about them.

The mothers. The fathers. The siblings. The children. The friends, the ones relied on by others, the ones who had some minimum rights as living things, the feeling, loving, hating, caring, giving, taking, living mortal beings. Even if they were Alliance, even if they fought for the other side, they had some rights. They were prisoners. Defenseless, restrained, completely at the mercy of their captors until their release or ransom. It was a mercy they had been denied, and all for the operations of a lumber camp which could easily have negotiated a settlement with Darnassus had they simply offered a treaty and some token gestures.

He had wrecked families, scarred communities, deprived friends and loved ones of the people they needed, all victims who had been under his care - a jailer was still someone who was supposed to care for his prisoners and protect them from cruel or unusual treatment. He betrayed the trust of the Horde and violated something sacred, something that didn't need to be written on paper, that didn't even need to be taught, something that was innately understood: that you don't bleed an already beaten opponent who can't fight back.

Every person he had hurt during that time, every prisoner whose rights he trampled, whose person and psyche he had injured...he cared for them now. He truly meant that. He didn't care for them when it was his duty, but he cared for them now. He remembered every one of them, and promised himself that for as long as he lived, he would remember their bravery in the face of a heartless monster, the courage to wake up again the next day and hope for release. He remember the names of people for whom he only wished the best in life now.

If they needed to hate him for all their lives, and their entire communities needed to hate him, then he prayed to whatever created him for their hate to remain focused on him if it helped them cope with the great evil he had done. He truly hoped with with everything he had in him that they would continue to do so, and to purify all that negativity out of themselves, finding comfort in having someone to blame.

And if they were foolish enough to forgive him for the unforgivable when he didn't deserve it, then he prayed that their forgiving of him would remain true, remain with them, and warm and comfort them on those nights when they asked themselves why it had to happen to them.

It was about them, and whatever helped them try to lead normal lives again.

"Hmmmmm..." he hummed one last time that evening, his vocal chords chiming normally now despite the flux of joy and despair in his voice.

Khujand no longer wished to be forgiven. He no longer wished for them to understand him. It didn't matter if they knew how sorry he was. He no longer needed anything at all for himself. All he wanted was for all of those he hurt, wherever they were, to discover whatever it was in this world they needed to take solace in, and to cherish it for all their days. He truly wished - truer than anything he had ever wished in his whole life - for their hurt to go away, for them to achieve what they needed to just move on, to be happy and in love with life. And however they managed to do so, in whatever way they did so...he hoped with all of his heart and soul that they would one day find what was truly heaven for them.


	9. A Second Chance

_Two months ago._

Cold. Freezing cold. Bubbles, and cold, muffled screaming under the water.

It was so cold. This wasn't air. Freezing cold, but not the Desolace wind. How are there bubbles? And so much cold?

Water. The cold bubbles are from water.

The two grunts laughed down at the short-tusked jungle troll, his scarlet mane now soaked from the bucket of ice cold water they had just dumped on his head. It was still dark out, and within the time zone of Desolace the sun wouldn't be rising for another hour and a half or so. Khujand coughed as cold water and phlegm dripped from his nose, rolling over and assuming the position despite this method of waking him up being totally new. The dirt at the bottom of his metal cage had turned to mud, and he shivered slightly as the wind chill made the water dripping down the back of his neck feel even chillier.

"Not a word, mongrel," the grunt with the cage keys growled at him. "Do NOT wake the others yet." The cage door swung open as Khujand tried to calm his heart rate and figure out what was going on.

"Out!" The grunt puncuated his command with a swift kick to Khujand's lower back and he quickly rose and exited the cage backward as was the norm. He glanced around; all the other inmates were sleeping and there were still stars in the sky. As the bucket was placed in his cage which itself was then shut and locked, the defeated troll stared at the ground between his feet. There was no urge to ask questions at all. His will to question and understand what was happening to him had been broken ages ago by enough whippings, starvings and days chained to the septic tank inside a latrine.

Like a dog under the shadow of a rolled up newspaper, he trotted forward as each grunt held him by an arm; they hadn't even bothered to handcuff him, though he didn't notice. Whatever. Perhaps he would be unceremoniously thrown off the cliffs now, or was merely being called for some emergency cleanup in the town smithy. Whatever. It didn't matter either way.

Khujand only looked up when the glow of a mage portal shone before him in the latrine area, the latest officer who had been rotated in to Shadowprey standing beside it. It wasn't until he could feel the vibration of the portal's arcane hum on his skin that he realized he was being dragged right into it.

Reeling to the ground and catching himself with his palms, Khujand was only barely able to recognize the dark crimson hue of the woven carpet underneath him before he felt the furry hand of a tauren helping him to pull himself up. The tauren's other hand was gripping a mahogany stick wrapped in leather and enchanted with an electric charge. Wearing nothing but tattered prisoner's shorts, he stood barefoot before Lorthiras. The Forsaken lawyer's hands were folded over top of each other in front of his body as he stood next to his large, rectangular desk. The hustle and bustle of the Orgrimmar streets could be heard outside as the tauren bailiff attempted to lead the hefty troll to the dull gold chair in front of the desk. Their body weights were nearly even now, and the baliff quickly turned his head back toward the prisoner in shock when he realized that he wouldn't be able to just pull Khujand around like last time.

The crackle of the enchanted stick uploaded a flashback of the office to his brain, memories of his last meeting there running through his head. Despite all those years of desensitization and forced submission, his survival instinct rushed back to him like a crashing wave and the sound of the electric crackle compelled him to choose to sit down - to choose to - in order to avoid bodily harm.

"Good to see that you still have your wits about you," Lorthiras addressed him without stirring from his position. "You've changed considerably."

Khujand hunched over in the seat, staring at the floor. With the bailiff wielding a weapon right behind the chair, the prisoner repeated the pattern of behavior that had been beaten into him over so many years. Observing his surroundings was not a right he felt he had.

"I'll need your full attention, Khujand. We don't have much time, and my colleague will need your presence in the Blasted Lands within half an hour."

If there was anything that could snap the broken man out of his stupor, it was the logically incomprehensible sentence that just bored its way into his ear. Sitting up fully straight, the full color of his surroundings invaded his eyes as he searched for the man who had staved off his death long enough for Khujand to live in hell for almost a fifth of his entire life span up to that point in time. The Forsaken and the Darkspear looked at each other for a long time, Lorthiras wanting to grant Khujand all the time he needed to let that sink in. The tauren bailiff reattached his weapon to his belt and relaxed a little.

"Could ya please...ah...qualify ya statement, sir?" the demure prisoner asked. "If that's okay with ya." He suddenly realized that he had been making eye contact with a non-prisoner who was automatically higher than him in society, and quickly cast his eyes down again.

"Alright, I'll try to make this quick," Lorthiras said as he began pacing in his theatrical fashion, his hands behind his back. "Connections and favors, if you remember our last meeting five years, eleven months and thirteen days ago. I managed to keep you alive in the process of granting a favor to a colleague defending a prison transport official who needed the death of two inmates in a wagon fire covered up. You took the fall for the wagon fire, served the sentence of a highway robber and another man was sent to be executed in your place."

Something inside of Khujand began to wake up. He remembered all of these details. This was something which he experienced. He. He was a person with a life. The concept was alien yet familiar.

As Lorthiras continued to speak, the slightly less meek troll liften his head and was almost nervous at all the colors around him. This wasn't the mountainous grey tomb he slept in at Desolace. The deep crimson color of the cushion he sat against matched the paint on the walls. His former lawyer's personal library still lined every wall, the bindings of the books forming disorganized rainbows that surrounded them on three sides. The undead was wearing a brand new jet black suit with white stripes. The grey flecks in the bailiff's fur had increased since the last time. Everything was so vibrant, so colorful. It should have been overwhelming, it should have induced another nervous breakdown like he had experienced in that same chair, it should have caused him to retreat in his shell. Yet none of that happened. He was so different now, yet he felt as though the day his tusks had been clipped, when Lorthiras had first informed him of his lot in life, was only yesterday.

"Well, the man who was supposed to be Garot'jin escaped and only three men were executed that day instead of four. It was technically the fault of the prison officials transporting him, though the prosecutor of the case was held at fault publicly." Lorthiras stopped pacing for a moment and turned to face his former client now, hands still folded behind his back. "That prosecutor is in debt to the authorities, who are calling him in for a favor and now he is calling me in for a favor. The latest campaign is ready to march in the Blasted Lands. I was contacted via a portal messenger, which they only do when time is of the essence. They need someone, an elite fighter to fill out a unit. Now. This afternoon. My portal specialties allowed me to contact the prison officer there in Shadowprey when it was still early morning in that time zone, though it was a risk spending time with such an attempt."

Lorthiras reached forward and, for the first time since they had met years ago, made physical contact by placing his hands on Khujand's shoulders. "Every minute counts. I'm going to need you to snap out of it for what I am about to say."

Too much information. Too much, too fast. Khujand was supposed to be in prison with many months still left in his sentence. This couldn't be happening. This didn't make sense. He began to bend over as the information overload gave him a headache. Lorthiras pulled back and folded his hands behind his back again.

"You were trained by Shadow Hunters and now I need you to take another portal to the Blasted Lands so the prosecutor who failed to provide a fourth scapegoat for the torture scandal years ago can fulfill a debt to a Horde military tribunal who are in a bind because they need one more hero unit to fill the second row of the left flank of the initial push through the Dark Portal into the Tanaan Jungle on an alternate timeline version of Draenor so you can help the real Horde fight against the Iron Horde."

"Bleeeecchch!"

"How vulgar."

"Whoa, nasty!"

The exclamations of Lorthiras and the bailiff as well as the sound of Khujand expelling any bile and water left in his stomach all occurred simultaneously. He had managed to slide his feet off to the sides just in time, though the expensive looking carpet was now soaked. Hands trembling against his knees, he dry heaved one more time with his head almost down between his legs before rising back up again and slumping in the chair. Surprisingly, he felt a lot better.

Lorthiras beckoned with two fingers and his spectral secretary phased into the room with a spectral mop that somehow cleaned up Khujand's non-spectral vomit from the carpet; the jungle troll didn't even bother adjusting his sitting position to make the cleanup easier. "I suppose the portal sickness finally caught up with you," the undead said in a voice that could almost be described as wry. It was more a combination of that and the fact that what Khujand had just heard the most insane and ridiculous news he could have imagined.

"You'll have to get over that porto-phobia quickly. The main reason why the prosecutor contacted me was time. The march is starting in just a few hours and they will need someone at the Shattered Landing in only half an hour to shower, get equipped and get squared away with the logistics officer." Lorthiras, ever the armchair psychologist, tried to force his horrendous, undead face to look sincere. "You're in for a lot of porting this morning, but it's for a noble cause."

"Ow...what...Horde and Iron Horde?" The man who was not quite a prisoner and not quite free raised his head despite his dizziness only to feel a bit worse once he saw his former attorney wheeling that blasted chalkboard over from the corner. Within seconds, it was filled with the familiar style of arrows, circles and names. The entire explanation of what had transpired on Azeroth during his imprisonment must have taken at least ten minutes, during which Khujand and the baliff both remained silent. Lorthiras was amoral, but he was also brilliant and knew how to get a point across.

* * *

Sighing despite not needing to breathe, the lawyer gripped the now filled chalkboard with his left hand while half-turning toward his former client and pointing at him with the chalk. "Let's review, shall we?"

Khujand sighed himself, feeling mentally exhausted though knowing that the recap would be necessary. This was too much information right after he had been brought out of his physical and mental prison and into Lorthiras' office only fifteen minutes ago.

"Thrall stepped down as Warchief and relinquished the title to Garrosh Hellscream in order to focus his efforts on saving Azeroth from the return of the insane dragon Deathwing the Destroyer whose original name was Neltharion and the dragon's return caused a worldwide series of natural disasters known as the Cataclysm. Garrosh continued to harass the Alliance as well as neutral entities without provocation, eventually unearthing a doomsday device on a previously unknown continent inhabited by a race of sentient, non-furbolg bear people and caused a civil war within the Horde. Both the Alliance as well as members of the Horde opposed to Garrosh's tyranny led a joint rebellion which lead to his overthrow and the installation of Vol'jin as the third Warchief of the Horde. During Garrosh's war crimes trial, a renegade bronze dragon aspect helped him to escape to an alternate timeline approximately thirty-five years ago on Draenor where he then betrayed said bronze dragon aspect and prevented his father from drinking the Blood of Mannoroth which corrupted the orcs and led to the First and Second Wars. They formed a new Iron Horde which is using modern-day technology to launch a new invasion of modern-day Azeroth from the alternate timeline Draenor from thirty-five years ago but not thirty-five years ago in our timeline and there is now a joint Alliance-Horde effort to preemtively invade the alternate timeline version of Draenor from thirty-five years ago in order to stop the Iron Horde before it's too late. You're going to fill in an empty spot for an elite unit that needs to be filled within an hour and fifteen minutes all the way on another continent because the logistics officer functioning under a military tribunal holds the debt of the prosecutor who provided only three war criminals six years ago instead of four and that prosecutor is a colleague of mine who already owes me one favor for covering for the failed prison transportation officer in the first place and now owes me a second which is how the legal world turns. So now you're going to be ported to the Blasted Lands and outfitted for war on the same morning you were in a secret prison in Desolace but not really because it's a secret and then ported again to a different planet on an alternate timeline upon which you aren't really expected to survive."

Moving back from the chalkboard, Lorthiras stood at attention with his hands at his sides and white dust still settling from all the furious chalkboarding. It took everything the slack-jawed, short-tusked jungle troll had in him to fight off a brain aneurism.

"The end."

Khujand didn't know whether to be more impressed by Lorthiras' chalkboard drawing skills or the fact that he had said all of that in under thirty seconds. The jungle troll facepalmed, trying to take it all in.

"We're running out of time, Sir Lorthiras," the bailiff said in a lecturing tone.

The Forsaken nodded and then turned back to the dumbstruck mess sitting in the chair, placing a hand on the head of the chair and leaning a bit closer. "I negotiated an early release for you as part of the deal," Lorthiras told his former client in his best attempt to use a soothing voice. "You'll help secure the Tanaan Jungle at first, to let second and third waves of the inter-factional force come through. If you do happen to survive Tanaan, you'll be on parole while on Draenor, but once that's finished, you're free to go wherever you want and do whatever you want. You'll be free, along with a semi-clean slate to start over with. And you'll be defending the world we live on. It's better this way." It reminded Khujand of the way Lorthiras had spoken to his orcish assistant all those years ago when handing some letter to him.

"Ya mean..." his voice trailed off a bit as he tried to comprehend all the information flying his way. "Ya mean...they want me there? At the march?"

"Well, no, not you specifically," Lorthiras corrected. "They asked me for somebody. I offered to take you off the Shadowprey site's hands. The logistics officer has been informed that you're coming, but they didn't ask for anyone in particular."

Then why am I even here, Khujand thought to himself. Lorthiras seemed to notice the puzzled look on the jungle troll's face.

"I could have grabbed anybody, you know," the Forsaken said as he folded his arms and leaned against his desk in the most casual manner Khujand had ever seen him in. "The only thing they asked for was someone big and intimidating who could inspire all the units of new recruits that will be positioned around the Shadow Hunters. It would have been possible, in the mere hours I have to provide this favor, to pull any scary thug from the normal prison here in Orgrimmar.

"But I didn't do that, Khujand. I didn't do that because I never forget my clients. And if by some chance the person filling in this _spot_ does survive Tanaan, I know that you're one person who wouldn't squander the opportunity at a second chance for a clean, straight edge life. Even trying to contact the prison in Shadowprey via portal was sapping precious minutes from those hours. I did that because I believe you can do this, that you are willing to do this, and will reciprocate by doing your part for this planet we live on."

Despite all the emotions he hadn't known for a long time bubbling up inside him, despite the excessive load of information dumped on his head, despite the crushing pressure of now having to make decisions and choices on his own, there was something that clicked inside of the burnt-out jungle troll.

_Go._

Khujand looked up at Lorthiras. "None of this makes any sense, but...I'm ready," he rasped, his throat still raw from throwing up just a few moments ago.

"Splendid," Lorthiras beamed as he clapped his hands a single time. "And we're a bit early as well. At the Shattered Landing, you'll be able to shower and have access to a special armory for the unit - two Shadow Hunters and a Berserker died during the Iron Horde's initial assault in the Blasted Lands and you'll be allowed to scavenge what you need from their gear. A subordinate to the logistics officer is impatiently waiting in the makeshift armory hut at the Shattered Landing. Once you're suited up, you'll be led to your unit and marched up for the assault on the Dark Portal."

His head was still spinning from all the information, but Khujand somehow willed himself to stand, a sense of real purpose returning to him after so much time spent pulling trees. The sensation of the bile passing through his throat had been enough to convince him that this was all real, that the past fifteen minutes weren't a dream. It was all so bizarre, just as bizarre as the initial identity swap Lorthiras had organized for him six years prior. He had given up while in prison. Full stop. There was zero hope for any end other than being released on time and dumped in the wasteland with no food, money or shelter. He wasn't overwhelmed anymore, but he was so shocked that he was aware that he must be numb as a reaction; it would sink in later, and when it would, it would feel like being caught in an elekk stampede.

But there was no time for that now. Every action he took was merely a reaction to what was happening around him. There was no time to think.

"Thank ya, Lorthiras," he said in a normal yet tired speaking voice, finally able to make eye contact. "You've given me a life. It ain't the life I once had...but maybe I don' want that one back anyway."

Lorthiras nodded and without a word, squatted down a bit and stretched out his arms. A dark green-black portal swirled into existence to the right of his desk, the red, cracked soil of the Blasted Lands barely visible. Khujand stared, still having difficulty comprehending the fact that this wasn't a cruel practical joke. Papers swirled around the room and off the desk as a strange force - not the wind - orbited the unstable gateway.

"Just for your information when this is all over," shouted Lorthiras over the sizzling energy of the portal, "I've established contact with the real highway robber who escaped execution after the identity swap. He's been living his life as Garot'jin the Outcast Terror for the past few years and sent some threatening letters about hunting you down and 'thanking' you for trying to have him executed in your place. Nothing you can't handle though, right?"

Khujand's eyes were about to pop out of his head. "What?! Wait, how did you contact-"

With a running start, the bailiff rushed forward on his hooves and shoved Khujand through the portal entirely, making sure that the hulking former prisoner would move this time.

* * *

Khujand realized that he must have blacked out for a second as he pushed up off the cracked soil with both hands; his chin, chest and palms were sore as though he had fallen. It was only the third time in his life he had used a portal and he didn't like it.

"On your feet, uh, let's see...Khujnad!"

From his hands and knees, he could see an orcish officer with a clipboard holding a messy stack of papers and leather bindings. Her armor was light though the axe at her waist was...

...wait, her? Khujand quickly jumped to his feet, not even bothering to dust himself off. He didn't even notice that they were inside some rickety makeshift storage house with aluminum sheets for walls. And a roof. This was the first time he had been within conversation distance of a woman...God, in how many years?

She was clearly an officer...was she ma'am? Or still sir? Oh no, where should he look? Would eye contact be considered flirting? Would no eye contact be considered insubordination? He would have been more prepared for fighting the fake alternate Horde with a pointy stick than this!

"Alright, I have your ID here," she said with disinterest as she shuffled the papers on her clipboard. "I trust your legal counsel briefed you on the conditions of your addition to an elite hero unit for the purposes of the initial landing at Tanaan."

Oh, she's talking to him? There wasn't anybody else here. Oh God, there wasn't anybody else here! Was that even appropriate? "Uh...washyu want me do?" His old accent from childhood came back as he sought for what to say. She's your superior he tried telling himself, treat her like a man with a smaller shoe size.

The officer rolled her eyes non-sarcastically. "Ugh, ok. They put you in the elite hero unit with the other Shadow Hunters. Several heroes who fell with the initial Iron Horde assault were also Darkspear, hopefully their gear will be large enough to...uh...accomodate you. Take what you need, suit up, and get your ass out there. Once the landing from the Dark Portal is secure, you will be considered a hero unit due to your skills, on the level of Death Knights or Archdruids. You'll be free to roam Draenor for the duration of the campaign and trusted to use your own judgment to help the war effort as needed. Once your parole is over, go do what you want."

Listening to her speak helped bring him back to reality. He was a war veteran. He fought in the Third War when he was only seventeen yeard old, barely considered an adult by the standards of the Horde. He could do this.

Plus she had a much nicer sounding voice than a man would have. It was both informative and somehow nice to listen to.

"And, listen, sir..." She looked away for a moment and clutched the clipboard to her chest both both arms, appearing a bit shy to say what was on her mind. "You can grab a spare change of clothing in the gear scavenging area to your right here. Grab some clothes and _go take a bath_. You smell awful."

Well, that certainly deflated him quickly. Everybody in prison smelled. He had so much civilized behavior to re-learn. The officer walked out and closed the asymmetrical door behind her, leaving him alone to clean himself up.

Considering how depressed he had been up until this morning, the giddiness Khujand experienced when selecting gear and even clothing from the armory was like a whole other world. Looking over a long wooden table wedged against the wall full of various articles of clothing, he had scoped out a clean, almost knee-length loincloth that was thick enough to provide some warmth and was attached to a firm leather belt. Immediately screaming out to the more paranoid side of his brain, he found an unused steel protective cup which could strap on underneath; while most of the brave warriors were probably worried about protecting their heads and necks, Khujand had been kicked in the balls twice in prison fights and was worried about getting kicked a third time. He took both articles of clothing and placed them on a much shorter table next to the back door leading to the shower; there was no one else around, but his paranoia compelled him to hoard things that he wanted in hard-to-notice areas.

The shower in the back of the makeshift armory/shower gazebo was more like a five-foot high partition with a small roof over it and a bucket full of water that wasn't quite warm enough. There wasn't even a fence behind the gazebo and armory shed, and his bathing activities allowed him to take in the view of the vast, red, barren expanse that was the Blasted Lands.

Before he could actually take a full shower, there were other hygenic necessities which he needed to attend to, things that had been denied to him for literally years. He started by trimming and shaping his chinstrap beard with a straight razor from the armory and shaved the sides of his scalp to regain the mohawk typical of the older generation of trolls - he couldn't understand the whole spiky hair thing many of the Darkspear his age were doing now. He had found a super thin piece of metal wire intended for rogues to garrote people with in the armory, using it to floss his teeth for the first time in years. His cleansing spell had allowed him to detect that there were no cavities, but the opportunity to clean his teeth was still too much to pass up on; what was a daily chore to normal people now felt like a coveted luxury. Not even the bleeding of his gums could detract from the satisfaction of having clean teeth. One squirt of liquid soap into his mouth (there was no toothpaste available) followed by some gargling, and there was finally some semblance of mouth hygeine.

It was only once Khujand began lathering himself that he realized how much he had needed to bathe. Bathing himself with only a small, bright pink bar of soap and a wire mesh brillo pad while standing inside a partition composed of weathered plywood made him feel like royalty. The only parts he didn't furiously scrub with the soap and brillo pad were his eyeballs (he did scrub his eyelids). Extra care was taken to scrub hard behind the ears, inside the ears, the bottom of the feet, under the nails and inside every nook and cranny of his body. Prison had robbed him of many things but by God, his love of cleanliness was as in tact as ever.

"He he he heeeeeh," he snicked to himself with a slightly manic, satyr-like voice as he vigorously scrubbed. Having a real shower after years of hard labor brought him a joy that people on the outside would never understand.

By the time the shower had finished, the entire bar of soap had dissolved. Lifting the bucket over his head, he rinsed the soaps suds off and noticed that the runoff water had a slightly brown tinge to it from all the soot and grime. There was an inch of water left in the large bucket and he rinsed himself one last time before using a wool sweater he had found on the clothing table as a towel to dry off before donning his loincloth.

Back inside the armory, he was like a kid at the candy store. Jungle terrain would be rough and he forewent the habit of walking barefoot for a pair of two-toed leather shoes, along with a matching set of leather grips for his hands and cloth wraps for his knees and elbows. While mail was supposed to be the heaviest thing to wear - a Shadow Hunter was analogous to the orc and tauren shaman - he still felt that a lack of armor around his joints would grant the most flexibility and he could compensate by protecting other areas well. He covered the entirety of his shins and forearms with long arcanite shinguards and bracers, but used the wooden red-and-yellow planks of the Darkspear on his shoulders for the sake of nostalgia. He was still shirtless and his thick thighs, torso, neck and upper arms were uncovered. Avoidance and mobility would have to be his main tactics, just as he preferred.

From the weapons rack, he grabbed a double-bladed fel glaive like the one he used in the Third War and, much to his delight, a kodo femur that could be wielded like a giant, two-handed club. He secured everything to his back along with a long travel pack using a combination of leather straps and steel chains wrapped diagonally across his body. Before leaving the rack, he spied a serrated combat knife that reminded him of a shiv he once got caught making behind a bush in the dinner area at Shadowprey and strapped its holster to his belt just in case. Having not had the luxury of a mirror for so long, he spent time tying some raptor feathers with leather straps around his biceps and thighs and combing his hair for the first time in years.

Khujand finally felt like a real, living being again. He spent an inordinate amount of time looking at the massive change in his appearance - especially after bathing - until the war horn sounded.

"Khujnad, get your ass out here!" the officer shouted as she banged on the asymmetrical door.

* * *

There were no words to describe the Dark Portal. The sheer size was unlike anything else on Azeroth - no citadel, no castle, no fortress, nothing even from the era of the great troll empires or pre-Sundering elven architecture could compare. The height alone was unbelievable - how long could it have taken to construct such a thing? The dark green and black energy swirling in the portal had slowed down at that point - another push from the Iron Horde had been staved off for the moment.

Khujand had arrived late, not knowing anyone other than the orcish officer who gave him his ID card back and not quite knowing where to go. By the time he had reached the Portal, the initial fighting at its steps had ceased. All around him were hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand champions representing all the races of Azeroth. All along the beaten paths leading to the entrance, on the tops of the hills and on the sides, pushing, marching, leaning against each other. If he hadn't been overwhelmed in Lorthiras' office upon hearing about this march verbally, he was certainly overwhelmed now. Not since the Third War when he served at the rear at the Battle of Mount Hyjal had he seen so many people in one place, and all for the same reason. The Horde and its champions were amassed on the left side of the Dark Portal, a swirling mass of pikes, bows, guns and mounted cavalry; the Alliance, people whom he killed on the battlefield without remose just a few years ago, were all on the right side. They would never be his comrades, but there was no animosity on that day. There was something more important happening now.

Drums. Cheers. Chanting. All around him. The body heat and grunting of a thousand people was blocking out almost anything else Khujand's senses could pick up and he had to fight to focus on anything. The officer had sent him off to a group of other tall Darkspear jungle troll fighters, off on the left flank. Upon seeing them, there was an internal struggle to stave off the sense of guilt rushing back in. They were gaunt and lean but stern, many of them greying and scarred and intimidating with the amount of experience they must have had. They all stood on a small hilltop perhaps a few hundred yards from the steps of the Portal, all six of them in a line. They were surrounded by lower ranking recruits, their presence - like that of the other hero units - intended to inspire those around them.

But Khujand was no hero. He knew that. As he finally managed to tune out the defeaning roar of a thousand voices drifing from the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds of armed people around him, he could not help but compare himself to the six men he had been grouped with. They were not as powerful as him physically - though one was taller, a rarity - they were obviously far more skilled with voodoo magic and their blades, and were men of honor and glory for the Horde.

As some of them glanced at his short, sawed-off tusks from the corners of their eyes, he felt their judgment being passed on him. He didn't belong here. He was a war criminal, a torturer of the defenseless, and he didn't deserve the second chance he had been given. These men were mostly in their fifties, intelligent, wise, keepers of the lore of the Darkspear tribe. Khujand was a 27-year-old phony who had only trained with Shadow Hunters for a few years and had spent the past six years with his skills rusting while he hauled lumber.

This was not the time for melancholy, but the day had been an emotional roller coaster. So many feelings that had been pushed down and forgotten over the years.

_There's no time for this now._

The voice felt so natural, so strongly a part of him, that he wasn't even shocked at its return. His thinking was cut off by chanting. All around him, hundreds and hundreds of voices, a thousand voices, all chanting in various languages as there was movement at the front of the line. An orc and a human, both wielding massive hammers, rushed into the Dark Portal with a group of adventurers a few hundred yards away.

_It's started. Beat yourself up later. You're needed now._

Who could need him? He didn't even deserve to be alive. Nokar, Bralag and Lorkus had all been executed. If they deserved to die, why didn't he deserve to die?

_Irrelevant._

Khujand dug deep, trying to find something there. He didn't know what, but he was searching for something, anything.

_This isn't about you. It's about them. The people you hurt, the people you didn't hurt, the people you've never met, the people just trying to live their lives. You were given this second chance whether you like it or not. The world is in danger. You can sit here questioning yourself, or you can find a good death, fighting a good fight._

Drums. Cheers. Chanting. All around him. He felt the tauren riding their kodos and banging on their war drums, felt the pulse down in his feet, thumping up into his chest. The war cries and chants in a dozen languages echoed in his ears and flowed down in his veins in a physical sensation he would never be able to describe. Hundreds and hundreds of armed warriors dotting the hilltops and the beaten path up the steps, all marching together now, following the first wave of adventurers in. Their march was like a piece of art, like waves crashing upon the jagged rocks of a shoreline.

"Dis be it," the Shadow Hunter next to him shouted in a thick accent. "Dis da time! Forward! Make way for others ta follow our path!"

The pace had picked up now as their march picked up speed. Hundreds of soliders marched forward shoulder-to-shoulder, their weapons and spells readied. The Dark Portal was only a hundred yards away. Hundreds of people were still around him now, shouting, chanting, an array of different banners and skin colors and textures surging forward, all the different races and peoples of the world marching as one, all of them there for one reason.

_It's time. The world needs every cog in the machine to do its part. Focus._

Khujand still knew that he was no hero, still felt like he didn't deserve this chance...but he had it, deserved or not. This was fate. Azeroth needed people now, needed him, needed to end this threat. The people were all around him, hundreds of them all on the front lines, all there to fall so others could stand. The chanting never quieted down, not even after a few hundred more troops had entered the Dark Portal ahead of him. They were running now, all of them, one wave of people and sound rushing forward.

He felt it. Somehow through his depression, through his guilt, through what was probably mild mental illness, he felt it in every inch of his body. He was evil, he was despicable, he was depraved, but he wasn't worthless. He would march into Tanaan now and die, laying his corpse down so the real heroes could march over it and march a bit more safely. He wasn't afraid of what the afterlife held for him anymore; he had this life in front of him, and the lives of the people on this planet behind him. He had to do his part and what would come after was out of his hands.

Drums. Cheers. Chanting. All around him. The defenders of Azeroth barrelled up the steps to the entrance of this alternate version of Draenor, heading into the Tanaan Jungle so others could follow them. The units in front of his were disappearing into the dark green and black swirls, and as he approached with bodies all around him, he could vaguely make out the image of the battle raging on the other side.

Khujand pulled out his bone club and charged forward for the last dozen yards, charged with a speed he had never possessed in his entire life. Seeking the death he deserved, the dark green and black light enveloped him as he entered the Dark Portal.


	10. Is There Anything Else?

_Three days ago._

Without clouds to obscure the view, the night sky was exquisite beyond what any artist could have tried to capture. Swirls of brightly colored gasses decorated the blackness like ribbons, all while a thousand thousand shining stars dotted the background. It reminded them so much of the nights on Azeroth, yet they were so far from home, in a different time. At this time, back on their home world, he hadn't even been born yet; she had still been in her waking dream, existing rather than living. It was still a difficult concept to grasp for all the heroes who had come to Draenor.

Voices could still be heard from the settlement even at this hour of the night. He would not be allowed to stay the night inside of Highpass proper, but the local authorities had allowed him to sleep between the defensive wall and the settled area, thus protected from the dangers of Gorgrond's wilds. They were finally alone down in a secluded alcove cut into the rock wall of the town, cuddling on the soft grass as they stargazed in silence. More of their communication was becoming non-verbal now, even after only a month. Still, they talked. And talked. Then simply clung to each other in silence. And then talked some more. Everything felt so right when they could just stop being afraid of how they felt.

He had his left arm folded behind his head, functioning like a pillow as he looked up; she laid on the same side, resting her head on the left side of his chest. His heartbeat was strong, and she felt it push right through the hide of his pectoral muscle and into the skin of her cheeks and neck. A grin spread across her face every time their pulses met in unison. He tried to minimize the heaving of his chest as he breathed so as to not disturb her, though she enjoyed listening to the rumble of his lungs; each breath was deep, and there was a sort of vibration as he exhaled almost like the purring of a contented nightsabre.

He pressed his right hand into her left, the warm feeling making them both smile. Two smooth hands - hers and his - stained with the blood of so many innocent people. She started tracing lines on the meat of his palm, stretching her fingernails out into a circle and then closed into a point. His fingers twitched, but he did not pull away.

She knew he wanted to talk before he even started. He inhaled through his mouth briefly as he tried to find the words.

"Do ya still have dreams of ya victims?"

They shied away from nothing when they were alone, though this was not a common topic despite being what had initially drawn them together. She paused and pondered before responding. No longer feeling as though being together was somehow wrong, they were now as comfortable with silence as they were with speech. Conversations could progress slowly as they gave each other time to express themselves.

"It's very rare now. But it still happens," she whispered as she pulled her hand back down. "It never goes away entirely." They waited a little while longer, studying the shape of the constellations as she seemed to expect him to say more.

He didn't bother hiding the weariness in his voice, reaching out for her to lead the way, as was the nature of the relationship. "I still feel like I don't deserve this second chance sometimes."

"That never goes away entirely, either," she answered with a similar weariness in her voice, though less pronounced than his.

She moved closer and hugged the V-shape of his torso under his right arm. He clung to her left shoulder with his right hand.

Turning her head upward toward him, two pairs of glowing eyes met. His faint red had started to return during the night time as his voodoo acclimated to the nature of Draenor, matching her natural yet dull, slightly faded silver. "When you can sort out what you want to cut off from and what you want to hold on to, it gets much easier, I promise you that."

Rising up on her elbow for a moment, she maneuvered her face around the four-inch knubs protruding from his upper jaw; she preferred his tusks clipped like this anyway. With her chin placed high on his sternum, she nuzzled his nose with her own.

"I promise you, we will have a normal life one day."

* * *

A brief, chilly gust of wind whipped through the open door of the barracks and Khujand was snapped back into the present for a second time. He was still fingering her necklace around his neck, the behavior having replaced the nervous habit of fingering what were once long, proud tusks.

Anroka, the guild leader, had asked him a question, and he blinked rapidly as he slipped back into the present.

"So there's nothing from your past, back on Azeroth, that we need to know about?" she asked one more time. Her question was sincere; she didn't know a thing.

The fire flickered in the hearth at the barracks, the only other person in the room - another jungle troll - now having finally nodded off. There were only two conscious people in the main room now.

Khujand thought as long as those few brief moments would allow. He thought of all the promises he and Cecilia had made to each other, of their plans for a new life, a civilian life of honest work, back in Kalimdor. It would mean to finally move on and accept his...accept their new place in the world.

Anroka continued peering at him, expecting an answer to the last question of the interview. He had to decide now. He inhaled deeply, and made his choice.

"No."


End file.
